31. Baseball Dictionary (aboard-American Baseball Coaches Association)

aboard

On base. First used: McClure's Magazine, Apr. 1907.

ace

(1) In the early days of baseball, the term used for a score, as called for in the 1845 rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. First used: 1845, New York Morning News, Oct. 21. (2) A team's best pitcher. First used: 1902, The Sporting News, Nov. 15.

Baseball lore and tradition have always laid the origin of this term to one man. In 1869, pitcher Asa Brainard won 56 out of 57 games played by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first professional team. From then on, according to lore, any pitcher with a dazzling string of wins was called an "Asa," which later became "ace." -- Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

across the letters

A pitch passing the batter chest high.

activate

Returning a player to a team's active roster following injury or suspension.

activity

There is "activity in the bullpen" when one or more of a team's relief pitchers are warming up.

advance

What a batter does when he moves a baserunner one or more bases with a hit, ground out, fly out or sacrifice; what a baserunner does when he moves from one base to the next.

advance scout

A scout who studies the strengths and weaknesses of a team that his team will play next.

"The term was first used by Casey Stengel, according to Tony Kubek (in George F. Will's Men at Work, 1990). The practice dates to the early 1950s when the Brooklyn Dodgers began sending an advance man to the Polo Grounds or to Philadelphia to scout the teams on their way to Ebbets Field." -- Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

aggressive hitter

A batter who swings at pitches out of the strike zone.

ahead in the count

When a pitcher has more strikes than balls in the count. Can also be applied to a batter who has a count containing more balls than strikes.

airmail

To throw the ball over another player's head.

alley

(1)The portion of the outfield between the center fielder and the left or right fielders; also known as the "power alley" or the "gap". An "alley hitter" is a batter skilled at driving the ball into the alleys. (2) The dirt path between the pitcher's mound and home plate, common in the first half of the 20th century.

allow

When a pitcher gives up hits or runs.

All-American Amateur Baseball Association

Organization based in Johnstown, PA that advances, develops and regulates amateur baseball.

All-American Girls Professional League

A league that existed from 1943 to 1954, the brainchild of Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley, and which consisted of as many as fifteen teams playing a hybrid of baseball and softball in such places as Rockford, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis. and Kalamazoo, Mich. The 1992 film A League of Their Own celebrated the league.

All-Star

A player voted by the fans or chosen by the manager to appear in the mid-season All-Star Game. The method of selecting All-Stars have varied over the years. Beginning in 1933 or '34, fans voted for the players using ballots printed in the Chicago Tribune; managers voted in players from 1935 to 1946; fans made the selections from 1947 to 1957; rom 1958 to 1969 players, managers and coaches did the voting; since 1970 the fans do the voting. Critics claim allowing fans to vote turns the process into a popularity contest that sometimes ignores merit. The balloting process is funded by private companies; the Gillette Safety Razor Co. paid for it between 1970 and 1986. In 1987 USA Today began picking up the tab.

All-Star break

A three-day period in mid-July coinciding with the All-Star Game in which no regular season games are played.

All-Star Game

The annual interleague game played in July between players chosen as the best at their position. The players are selected by fan balloting, while pitchers, coaches and substitutes are chosen by selective managers -- who are, these days, the managers of two teams who played in the previous World Series. The first All-Star Game was played July 6, 1933 at Chicago's Comiskey Park, and was the brainchild of Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward. (In that first game, a two-run homer by Babe Ruth gave the AL a 4-2 victory.) Because of the war, an All-Star Game was not played in 1945, and the 1981 contest was postponed to August 9 because of that year's players' strike.

Amateur Softball Association of America

Headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, the ASA consist of over 100 local associations and more than 260,000 teams involved in slow pitch, fast pitch and modified pitch programs in male, female and coed leagues with players aged 9 to 70. The association was created in 1933 to discuss a set of rules for a game scheduled to be played at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition.

American Association

(1) This major league existed from 1882 to 1891 as a rival to the National League. It allowed Sunday games and beer sales at ballparks, charging half what the National League charged for admission. Even so, the AA floundered, and four of its teams -- Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis and Washington were absorbed by the National League.

(2) A primarily Midwestern minor league established in 1903 as Class A through 1907, Class AA through 1945, and then Class AAA from 1946-62 and since 1969.

American Baseball Coaches Association

Organization based in Hinsdale, IL that consists of over 5,000 members and which originated the NCAA World Series.

30. Ready or Not, It's Time We Got Started

Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" thousands of times, often adapting the dialogue to the setting, always sharpening. They are still performing it, on film, in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

"Who's on First?" is not so easy as, say, "Casey at the Bat" to parody, but with a little help from a trio of real baseball players named (Mike) Dunne, (Randy) Ready, and (Jim) Gott, a gifted columnist, Mike Downey of the Los Angeles Times, was able to burlesque the burlesque.

Ready or Not, It's Time We Got Started

Mike Downey

You think Pete Rose got a National League umpire angry? You should have seen Larry Bowa and Jim Leyland.

The San Diego Padres came to bat against the Pittsburgh Pirates the other day, with no leadoff man. The plate umpire went up to Bowa, the Padres manager, and said, "Need a batter here."

Bowa said: "He's still in the clubhouse. Be out in a minute."

The umpire waited a few minutes, then asked impatiently: "Well, where is he?"

Bowa said: "Hold on. He's almost here."

Umpire: C'mon, we ain't got all day. Get whoever it is out here.

Bowa: My first batter's Ready.

Umpire: Good.

Bowa: He'll be out in a minute.

Umpire: I thought you said he was ready.

Bowa: I did.

Umpire: Then let's get started.

Bowa: We can't until my batter gets here.

Umpire: You said he was here.

Bowa: Who?

Umpire: Your batter.

Bowa: He's still in the clubhouse.

Umpire: I don't understand. Is your batter ready or isn't he?

Bowa: Yes.

Umpire: Yes, what?

Bowa: He's Ready.

Umpire: Then let's play ball.

Bowa: But he's still in the clubhouse.

Umpire: Who's still in the clubhouse?

Bowa: My batter.

Umpire: I don't understand this at all.

Bowa: Wait. I'll be right back.

Umpire: Where do you think you're going?

Bowa: To the clubhouse to get Ready.

Umpire: For what?

Bowa: For the game.

Umpire: You're going to get ready?

Bowa: Yes.

Umpire: And what about your batter?

Bowa: That's why I'm going.

Umpire: Why?

Bowa: To get my batter.

Umpire: Where?

Bowa: In the clubhouse.

Umpire: What's in the clubhouse?

Bowa: My batter.

Umpire: So the reason you're going to the clubhouse is....?

Bowa: To get Ready.

The Padre manager disappeared into the tunnel. The Pirate pitcher, meanwhile, stiffened up waiting for the first batter, so Jim Leyland went to the mound. The manager talked to his pitcher for a very long time, until the umpire finally had to intervene.

Umpire: Your pitcher's done?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: OK. Who are you bringing in?

Leyland: To do what?

Umpire: To pitch.

Leyland: Maybe nobody.

Umpire: I thought you said your pitcher's done.

Leyland: I did.

Umpire: Well, is he or isn't he?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: He is what?

Leyland: He's Dunne.

Umpire: Then you're bringing in a relief pitcher?

Leyland: I don't know yet.

Umpire: Look, this guy here is done, right?

Leyland: Right.

Umpire: So you're going to bring in a relief pitcher.

Leyland: I'm still thinking about it.

Umpire: Your starting pitcher is done, right?
Leyland: Right.

Umpire: He's out of the game?

Leyland: No, he's standing right here.

Umpire: Who's standing right here?

Leyland. My starting pitcher. He's Dunne.

Umpire: Then take him out.

Leyland: But I might leave him in.

Umpire: Make up your mind!

Leyland: Actually, I was just stalling until I got one of my relief pitchers up.

Umpire: You were?

Leyland: Yeah.

Umpire: Got one?

Leyland: What?

Umpire: Got a relief pitcher?

Leyland: Yes, he is.

Umpire: Who is?

Leyland: Gott.

Umpire: Got what?

Leyland: He's one of my relief pitchers.

Umpire: Let me get this straight. Your starting pitcher's done?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: And your relief pitcher?

Leyland: Just got up in the bullpen.

Umpire: And the one you want?

Leyland: Gott.

Umpire: Got the one you want.

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: You want this one here?

Leyland: No, he's done.

Umpire: Let me try this one more time. You're bringing in a new pitcher?

Leyland: Yes.

Umpire: The one you've got up in the bullpen.

Leyland: Yes, I think he's ready.

Umpire: I thought he was the batter!

Bowa and Leyland were suspended for 30 days.

Joy in Mudville: The Big Book of Baseball Humor, Dick Shaap & Mort Gerberg (eds.)

Copyright 1992 by Dick Shaap & Mort Gerberg

Published by Doubleday

Image: Three Umpires, by Norman Rockwell

29. Losing A Big One

...And so it was on October 9, 1912. [Christy] Mathewson and the New York Giants had battled the Boston Red Sox to a deciding seventh game in the World Series. The Series would have ended sooner, with a New York victory. In the second game, the 32-year-old Mathewson had outpitched three younger foes for 10 innings, but five errors by his fielders cost him the win. He had to settle for a 6-6 tie when darkness ended the contest. Three days later, an error by the Giants second baseman led to a 2-1 loss even though Matty had retired the last 15 batters in a row.

Now the championship was on the line, and once again manager John McGraw handed the ball to Mathewson. The Giants scored a run in the 3rd, and it remained 1-0 until the Red Sox came to bat in the 7th. It was then that the fates played their first trick of the day on Matty, the man who aspired to perfection. With one out, Boston's player-manager, Jake Stahl, hit a fly ball to short left field. The New York shortstop, leftfielder, and centerfielder converged on it. They all arrived in time to catch the ball, but each one waited for another to take it, and it fell between them. With two men out, a pinch-hitter then doubled in the tying run.

Nobody scored in the 8th or 9th, but in the top of the 10th the Giants went ahead, 2-1. Mathewson then walked to the mound, determined to hold on to the lead and take home the prize. The first batter lifted a high fly ball to centerfielder Fred Snodgrass, who had to move only a few feet to make an easy catch. Incredibly, the ball trickled through his hands for a two-base error. The center fielder then redeemed himself by chasing a long fly ball and making a splendid catch.

Matty, whose control had been perfect in the first two games, walked the next man. That brought Tris Speaker, a .383 hitter, to the plate. Speaker hit a routine pop-up near the first-base coaches' box. Catcher Chief Meyers ran up the baseline as Matty came over from the mound. First baseman Fred Merkle, the closest man to the ball, took a few steps toward it. In the silence that shrouded the ballpark, where Boston's hopes seemed suddenly dashed, Matty called out clearly, "Meyers, Meyers," for the catcher to take it. Then somebody on the Boston bench, hoping to confuse the fielders, yelled, "Matty! Matty!" Merkle could have caught the ball easily, but he backed off to avoid running into the others. Mathewson could have caught it in his bare hand, but he had already called on Meyers. And so Meyers, who had the farthest to run, made a desperate lunge for it. The ball dropped to the ground in foul territory, untouched.

Given another chance, Speaker stood in the batter's box and called to Mathewson, "That's gonna cost you this ball game and the championship." And on the next pitch he lined a clean single that drove in the tying run and moved a man to third. The next batter hit a sacrifice fly to left field, and the winning run scored.

Realizing that even the greatest players sometimes make errors, Mathewson never blamed Snodgrass for dropping the fly ball that started his downfall. "No use hopping on him; he feels three times as bad as any of us," was all Matty said.

Sportswriter Ring Lardner, who was at the game, had a lot more to say about it. "There was seen one of the saddest sights in the history of a sport that is a strange and wonderful mixture of joy and gloom," he wrote. "It was the spectacle of a man, old as baseball players are reckoned, walking from the middle of the field to the New York players' bench with bowed head and drooping shoulders, with tears streaming from his eyes, a man on whom his team's fortune had been staked and lost, and a man who would have proven his clear title to the trust reposed in him if his mates had stood by him in the supreme test .... Beaten, 3-2, by a club he would have conquered if he had been given the support deserved by his wonderful pitching, Matty tonight is greater in the eyes of New York's public than ever before ...."

Baseball Legends: Christy Mathewson

Norman L. Macht

28. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 7)

The temperature dropped almost twenty degrees, back into the fifties, on October 7, the final day. Summer was past. It was time to bring the World Series to a close.

As everyone expected, Dressen went with big Joe Black. This was a third start in seven days, but Black was strong. Frank Graham, Jr., the Dodgers' scholarly publicist, pointed out that Christy Mathewson made three starts in six days during the World Series of 1905, and pitched three shutouts. But Mathewson was the nonpareil -- in twenty-seven innings he walked only one batter -- and besides the ball was dead. He didn't have to throw the modern rabbit to the likes of Mantle and Berra in a small ballpark. Dizzy Dean started three World Series games in seven days in 1934. He lost the middle one, but finished with a six-hit shutout. "I don't feel tired," Black said before the game.

[Casey] Stengel chose Ed Lopat, the lefthanded loser of Game Three. Except for [Duke] Snider and Shotgun Shuba, all the Dodger starters batted right and Snider, on a record pace, seemed to be hitting everything anyway. Stengel declined to discuss his reasoning. "Why doncha just watch the game?" he grumbled. "They give ya free tickets. Watch the game." We were left to conclude that Stengel preferred Lopat's experience and pitching wiles, to the younger, stronger, rested right arms of Tom Gorman or Tom "Ploughboy" Morgan.

Lopat nibbled at corners, changed speeds and spin and kept the Dodgers scoreless for three innings. Black looked strong and held the Yankees hitless until the fourth. Then [Phil] Rizzuto doubled to left and advanced as Mantle bounced out to first. The hitter was [Johnny] Mize. Black would stay away from his power, the inside part of the plate. He threw a low outside breaking ball. Mize changed his swing and tapped a gentle single to left field. The Yankees led by one run.

The Dodgers countered quickly. Snider singled to right. [Jackie] Robinson bunted deftly toward third. Even though the Yankees were anticipating a sacrifice, nobody could make a play. [Roy] Campanella bunted toward the same spot and beat Ed Lopat's throw to first base. Stengel hurried to the mound and lifted Lopat for Reynolds, who would now pitch in his fourth game this World Series.

Gil Hodges, who had come to bat eighteen times without hitting safely, lined out to left and Snider scored. When the outfield throw went bad, Robinson ran to third base. The game looked as though it might explode. But Reynolds reached back and struck out Shuba. Then Furillo bounced out. Going into the fifth, the game was tied.

Gene Woodling drove a home run over the screen in right.

Later, [Billy] Cox doubled and [Pee Wee] Reese singled. The game was tied again going into the sixth.

Reynolds and Black were wearing down. Strong, brave, heroic, but wearing down. Rizzuto opened the sixth with a liner that Reese was able to snare. Mantle caught up with a fastball and hit a very long home run, over the scoreboard in right, over the sidewalk beyond, over Bedford Avenue beyond that and into a parking lot. A swarm of civilians scrambled for the ball. Dressen replaced Black with Preacher Roe.

Reynolds retired the Dodgers in the sixth. [Gil] McDougald singled n the seventh, Rizzuto sacrified, Mantle shot a long single to left. The Yankees led by two. Stengel replaced Reynolds with Vic Raschi. He was using the heart of his starting rotation, his three finest pitchers, in a single game.

One day after his enervating struggle against Billy Loes, Raschi was wild. He walked [Carl] Furillo, got an out, fell behind to Billy Cox, who singled, and walked Reese. The bases were loaded with one out and here came the hottest batter in the cosmos, Duke Snider.

The crowd made raucous noises. Thirty-three thousand, a full house in Brooklyn, was less than half a Yankee Stadium crowd, but twice as passionate. So far, in a triumphant World Series, Snider had hit four singles, two doubles, and four home runs. Red Smith was calling him "The Archduke Snider." A single now would tie the score. A long double would put the Dodgers ahead. Another Duke Snider home run? ... The thought turned Brooklyn fans giddy.

A decidedly ungiddy Casey Stengel was not surprised to find Snider coming to bat with the ballgame and the Series on the line. As in classic drama, the major figures would play the principal scenes. Stengel was, in fact, prepared. One Yankee spearcarrier, 6-foot 2-inch Bob Kuzava, out of Wyandotte, Michigan, threw hard, lefthanded stuff. Kuzava was a career .500 pitcher, win one, lose one, never a star, just someone you needed to pitch the innings. In 1948 Kuzava lost sixteen games with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League. But one batter Bob Kuzava mastered that season was the star center fielder of the Montreal Royals, Duke Snider. Stengel was not a man to disregard history. He replaced Raschi with Kuzava. The issue was joined.

Snider worked the count full. If he could win this game, the Duke would be anointed King, Pope, Grand Rabbi, and Czar of all the realms of Flatbush.

Snider bore down. So did Kuzava. He threw a tailing outside fastball. Trying to drive the pitch to left, Snider lifted a mighty pop fly over third. Gil McDougald tapped his glove. Two out.

The hitter was Jackie Robinson. Two strong right arms were active in the Yankee bullpen. Stengel made no move. Kuzava threw hard stuff to Robinson who fouled back four consecutive pitches. Now came the play that decided the series.

Trying to drive a single to right, Robinson lifted a pop fly toward first base. Kuzava called the play, shouting, "Joe, Joe." But Joe Collins, who had replaced [Johnny] Mize, was looking to the same light pattern that brought down Billy Loes the day before -- blinding sunlight slanting through the arches behind the third base stands. Collins, a fine fielder, never saw the ball.

Billy Martin suddenly realized what was happening. He raced in from his spot at second base. The wind was blowing the pop fly away from him. Running with two out, Furillo and Cox crossed home plate. If Robinson's pop-up landed safely, the score was tied. Martin lunged and caught the baseball, ankle high.

The Dodgers never threatened again and when Reese, who had played so well, made the final out, the Yankees' 4-2 victory became living history. Brooklynites wept in the grandstands. Gladys Goodding serenaded the ballpark with a song from South Pacific.

She played "This Nearly Was Mine."

From my earliest years I'd heard Brooklyn fans cry out in defeat, "Wait till next year." My lead for the front page of the Herald Tribune leapt through the peanut shells residing in my portable typewriter:

"Every year is next year for the Yankees."

Red Smith peeked at my typewriter. "Good lead, sire," he said.


Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
Copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
Published by University of Nebraska Press

Image: Mickey Mantle and other Yankees celebrate winning the World Series

27. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 6)

We were back in Brooklyn for the sixth game....

Reporters ringed [Casey] Stengel in a dugout and tried to draw him into comments on the umpiring. No chance. Except when posed by star journalists, questions never interested Stengel. He would listen, then say what he wanted, questions be damned. "If you was watching," Stengel said, "you musta noticed they won the game for Brooklyn."

"Pardon, Casey," Red Smith said. "Who is 'they'?"

"Them outfielders is what I mean, Red. You can't get away from that. They make those border-line catches and they beat you and you can't kick on that. He [Charlie Dressen] had to have that outfield to win, but maybe if it's another day, they don't win that way."

Arthur Daley of the New York Times asked Stengel to be "a little more specific." Some of us laughed, but Stengel took his Times coverage very seriously.

"On some other days," he said, "the people out there in right aren't so quiet. An outfielder from the other side goes up to make a catch, they grab his shirt, they go for his arm. They grab the glove. They twist his fingers. They get the ball."

"You mean the fans?" asked Daley.

"It was our ballpark, wasn't it, Arthur? Those people were supposed to be our fans. Raschi today. He will pitch good. My men are ready." So also was the magical Stengel brain.

Billy Loes flung six commanding innings at Stengel's men and when [Duke] Snider drove a fastball over the screen, the Dodgers took a 1-0 lead. Then, nine outs away from the World Series victory, the World Series victory, Loes came unraveled.

[Yogi] Berra led off the seventh with a home run, much like Snider's drive. Gene Woodling singled up the middle.

"Time for Joe Black right now," I said to Smith. "Billy the Kid is losing it."

"And if the Dodgers lose the ball game, Skipper, who pitches tomorrow?"

"Preacher Roe and the rest of the staff. They can rest all winter."

It is simple to manage from behind a typewriter. All power and no responsibility. Dressen, with so much at stake, elected to stay with a twenty-two-year-old rookie. Or maybe Dressen simply froze.

Loes threw a ball and a strike to Irv Noren. Then, as he stretched to deliver his third pitch, the baseball fell out of his right hand. The ball bounced behind the mound. The umpires called a balk. Woodling advanced to second base.

Loes steadied and struck out Noren. Billy Martin popped out. Stengel, with several pinch hitters available, let Raschi bat for himself. The big pitcher smacked a bounder to Loes's right. Afternoon sun slanted through the arches that supported the upper deck on the left side of Ebbets Field. Loes looked for the ball but the sun got in his eyes. The baseball bounced off his left knee and caromed past Hodges. A pool-table single to right. The Yankees got the lead run in scoring position when the pitcher dropped the ball. They scored him when the pitcher lost a grounder in the sun.

Still Dressen stayed with Loes. [Mickey] Mantle opened the eighth inning with a 400-foot home run to left center. The Yankees led by two runs. Snider hit another homer in the bottom of the eighth and with two out Shotgun Shuba doubled. Stengel walked mournfully to the mound, where he muttered something to Raschi. Then both men turned toward the bullpen, where Allie Reynolds was throwing hard. Stengel pointed. Reynolds marched in. Raschi waited to wish him well. Reynolds nodded, but said nothing. He was going to work. The hitter was Roy Campanella.

Reynolds threw a fastball at Campanela's head. Then he threw two hard strikes. He threw an outside breaking ball. Campanella swung and missed. As the ball socked into Berra's mitt, Campanella's bat went spinning out across the infield. Reynolds literally had taken the bat out of Brooklyn's hands.

My lead, spread across three columns on the front page, expressed a degree of wonderment.

By using his two best pitcher, Casey Stengel got his

Yankees even again yesterday and beat the Dodgers, 3-2,

at Ebbets Field. Vic Raschi, the 33-year-old righthander

started and Allie Reynolds, the 37-year-old righthander,

finished, and the Yankees forced the World Series into a

seventh game....

If the Yankees are to win their fourteenth World Championship.

they wll have to beat Joe Black, Brooklyn's best pitcher.

Casey Stengel has no idea who will start today because

Reynolds, his original choice, worked yesterday.

So the Yankee manager will select Mr. X after a full night's

thought and considerably less sleep.

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn

Copyright 1997, Hook Slide, Inc.

Published by University of Nebraska Press

Image: Mickey Mantle at the plate in Game 6

26. Casey at the Bat

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day..." So began "Casey at the Bat, A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888," a poem that appeared in the fourth column of page 4 of the Sunday, June 3, 1888 San Francisco Examiner. The poem that would become the most famous American verse ever written was bylined "Phin" and sandwiched inconspicuously between editorials on the left and Ambrose Bierce's weekly column on the right.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer, or "Phinney," as such classmates as William Randolph Hearst and George Santayana called him, had been the editor of the Harvard Lampoon. After Hearst was kicked out of Harvard for sending personalized chamber pots to several professors, his father gave him the Examiner to run, and the errant heir soon asked Thayer if he would write a humor column for the paper.

It took Thayer half a day to write "Casey." The piece might have been forgotten altogether had not a novelist named Archibald Clavering Gunter clipped it and given it to his actor friend William DeWolf Hopper, who was performing a comic opera entitled Prince Methusalem at New York's Wallack Theatre on August 14, 1888. The Giants and White Stockings had been invited to the show, and Hopper thought the new piece particularly appropriate. Before beginning, though, he congratulated Tim Keefe, who was in attendance, on his feat of 19 straight victories.

Hopper, whose fifth wife was gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (their son Paul Hopper played Paul Drake in the Perry Mason television series), later described his first reading of the poem in his autobiography, Once a Clown, Always a Clown: "When I dropped my voice to B flat, below low C, at 'the multitude was awed,' I remember seeing Buck Ewing's gallant mustachios give a single nervous twitch. And as the house, after a moment of startled silence, grasped the anticlimactic denouement, it shouted its glee."

Had Casey hit the ball out of the park, we might never have heard of Thayer or Hopper or been subjected to the countless parodies of "Casey at the Bat." Hopper hit upon its appeal when he wrote, "There is no more completely satisfactory drama in literature than the fall of Humpty Dumpty." He would go on to recite the poem more than 10,000 times, each time in five minutes, 40 seconds...

Baseball Anecdotes, Daniel Okrent & Steve Wulf

Copyright 1989 by Daniel Okrent

Published  by Oxford University Press (New York), 1989

Image: In 1927, Paramount Pictures made Casey at the Bat, a silent film starring Wallace Beery

25. "The Biggest Boston Game Ever"

Was my team doomed? Sure seemed like it. Just one year earlier, I figured out that Santa Claus was a sham because he couldn't possibly hit everyone's house in one night, although I peeked downstairs to see my parents sticking gifts under the tree to make sure. So I was a realist (the Santa Claus theory), but also a little kid (peeking on Christmas Eve to make sure). And that's how I approached the [Boston Red] Sox over the next few years: I knew things were probably going to end badly, but that didn't stop me from watching as many games as possible and hoping I was wrong. When they jumped to a seemingly insurmountable fourteen-game lead over the Yankees in July of 1978, it seemed like our fortunes had changed. Then the Yank[ee]s started creeping back into the race -- to the abject horror of everyone in New England -- as the lead dwindled and eventually disappeared during the demoralizing Boston Massacre.* But just when it looked like the Sox were finished, they battled back with their own little streak, winning 12 of their last 14 (including their last eight) to force a one-game playoff.

You can't possibly imagine how big that game was. We didn't have cable TV. We didn't have video games. We didn't have the Internet, cell phones, DVD players or iPods. Honestly, there wasn't much happening in 1978. And when you don't have a ton of distractions, the distractions that do exist take on epic proportions. You know, like the Red Sox. This wasn't just the most important game of my entire life, it remains the biggest Boston game ever and will never be topped. We had to beat the Yankees. When you combine the circumstances between those two teams, with the Shakespearan relationship between those two teams, as well as the ghoulish setting of Fenway Park in the late afternoon and a petrified crowd ... seriously, has there ever been another baseball game quite like that? Even when ESPN Classic shows the old broadcast, there's an eerie vibe from the fans: deafening silences, urgent cheers, a palpable nervous energy, almost like 35,000 people were warned that they would be collectively slaughtered if the Red Sox lost.

My parents kept me home from school that day, like thousands of other kids in the Boston area. It felt like we were preparing for a nuclear attack; I'm not even sure if I was excited or scared. We watched the game in the basement of our house in Brookline .... Nursing a 2-0 lead in the seventh, Mike Torrez yielded the infamous three-run homer to light-hitting Bucky Dent, a pop fly that somehow drifted over the[Green] Monster and spawned Bucky's lifelong nickname in Boston: Bucky Fucking Dent. The Yanks padded the lead with two more runs, followed by the Sox answering with two in the bottom of the eighth. Yankees 5, Red Sox 4. With one out in the ninth, Rick Burleson walked against a tiring Goose Gossage (pitching into a third inning). Jerry Remy followed with a line drive to right field, where a flustered Lou Piniella -- completely blinded by the setting sun -- thrust his glove out and somehow snared the ball, almost like a guy defensively swatting at a bee and miraculously connecting. Burleson held at second. Unbelievable.

Now [Jim] Rice was up. Remember, this was his famous "46 HR/139 RBI/406 total bases" MVP season during an era when sluggers didn't have oversize heads, extended jaws, and back acne .... If you put Rice on an HGH program back then, he would have belted the first 700-foot homer. Believe me, there was nobody more imposing in 1978. You wouldn't have wanted anyone else up in this spot. Anyway, Rice ended up creaming a ball to right-center that looked like the game-winning double, only it veered right to Piniella (playing him perfectly in right-center), so the crowd ended up making one of those combination shriek/groans that became a Fenway trademark over the years. With Burleson advancing to third, the tying run was 90 feet from home plate. And Yaz was coming up.

Understand this about [Carl Yaztrzemski]. Nobody personified the Red Sox quite like him. A surly chain-smoker with a thick Boston accent, poor Yaz wore every harrowing Boston defeat on his face; he always looked 10 years older than he actually was, like a famous actor who seems too old to be starring in a baseball movie. Of course, no Red Sox player came through more times when it mattered, and few Boston athletes ever had a better sense of The Moment. Seeing him stride to the plate against the fireballing Gossage, well, other than Kirk Gibson's famous homer off Dennis Eckersley, has there ever been an at-bat that felt more like a movie scene? There was grizzled old Yaz trying to save the season, his lungs filled with nicotine residue, the sun setting behind him, needing a single to save the season. If this were a movie, William Devane would have played him, and Yaz would have ripped a Gossage fastball into the right field bullpen, and everyone would have happily skipped out of the dugout in slow motion, and the fans would have charged the field, and Yaz would have been swarmed as he hopped on home plate, and then the credits would have rolled. The end.

Here's the thing that killed me (and everyone else): Right as we were entertaining these magical thoughts, Yaz swung late on a Gossage heater and abruptly popped up to third. What sports movie would ever end like that? I remember the ball slicing up in the air, Yaz grimacing in disgust and slamming his bat like a shovel, the crowd shrieking n horror, Craig Nettles settling underneath it, the Yankees celebrating, everything going quiet, Yaz limping back to the dugout, the finality of it all.

I started crying. I cried and cried. My mom rubbed my head. I kept crying. Life wasn't fair. I kept crying.

I had just turned nine years old.


*On September 7, the Yankees rolled into Fenway trailing by just four games, then pulled into a dead heat by outscoring the Sox 42-9 in four games. That was the Massacre. The definitive moment: A haunting photo of Yaz slumping against the Green Monster during the umpteenth pitching change -- it was like that famous photo of  the naked little girl running in Vietnam.


Now I Can Die In Peace, Bill Simmons
Copyright 2005, 2009, Bill Simmons
Published by ESPN Books

Image: Bucky Dent hits the three-run homer and earns a nickname

24. Vintage Baseball ... In A Wine Cellar

How a near-pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series -- long believed to have been lost forever -- came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby's home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.

Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was too nervous to watch the series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.

....He knew he would want to watch the game later -- if his Pirates won -- so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby's home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.

Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.

....Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series -- leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games -- this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast -- is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.

....After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening house in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.

They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby's TV specials for a DVD release -- part of the estate's goal of resurrecting his body of work.

He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled "1960 World Series." They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees' Mel Allen and the Pirates' Bob Prince -- the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD,

....The production is simple by today's production. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players' names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.

Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.

Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra's three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirate catcher Hal Smith's eight-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 ("That base hit will long be remembered," Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente ... bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski's winning drive to left field ("And the fans go wild," Allen said).

The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam's apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.

It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.

But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.

"How about that?" Allen said after Mantle's play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate....

"In Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar, Vintage Baseball," Robert Sandomir
The New York Times, 23 September 2010

IMAGE: Pittsburgh's Bill Mazeroski mobbed at home plate after series-winning homer

23. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 5)

Small as he was, [Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher] Carl Erskine looked strong and confident. With one out in the first inning, Phil Rizzuto lined a fastball into left centerfield. Shotgun Shuba broke with the crack of the bat, stared through the smoke and the chiaroscuro light [of Yankee Stadium] and ran down the drive, a fine play....

An inning later Gene Woodling smacked another hard line drive, this one toward the seats in right field. Andy Pafko put his right hand on the box seat railing and launched himself toward the ball. He caught it at the top of his leap. What looked like a two-run homer died in the pocket of Pafko's glove. To cold-eyed observers, these two smashes suggested that Erskine was making mistakes. To the more mystical, the catches meant something else. This was Erskine's day. He could make mistakes and get away with them.

His curve was formidable. His fastball was good enough and his change of pace kept the big Yankee hitters off stride. Going into the fifth inning he was pitching a one-hitter and no Yankee had reached second base. The Dodgers chipped away at Ewell Blackwell and when [Duke] Snider homered in the top of the fifth inning, Brooklyn moved ahead 4-0.

Suddenly Erskine lost his touch. He walked Hank Bauer. [Billy] Martin singled. Irv Noren batted for Blackwell and singled home Bauer. Gil McDougald forced Noren, but Rizzuto singled and Martin scored. Mantle fouled out and when Johnny Mize came to bat, [sportswriter] Rud Rennie said, "The deuces are on the table." The Yankees had scored two runs. Two men were out. Two runners were on base.

Erskine got two strikes on Big John Mize. "Four of a kind," [sportswriter] Red Smith said. Erskine wasted a breaking ball. Then Mize hit a fastball deep into the lower stands in right. It was his third home run in three days, his third homer in three World Series games. He was having a rebirth at thirty-nine....

The Dodger lead and Erskine's mystique suddenly were history. [Charlie] Dressen marched mournfully toward the mound, right hand in the right back pocket of his uniform. Erskine's description of what happened next is splendid:

"I see Dressen coming and ... I think the numbers are against me. October fifth, it was. That was a wedding anniversary, my fifth. The fifth inning. I've given the Yankees five runs. Forget thirteen. Five must be my unlucky number.

"Charlie says to give him the ball. You weren't allowed to talk when he came out. He was afraid you might argue him into leaving you in, and you had to wait on the mound for the next pitcher, so's you could wish him good luck. Now Charlie has the ball. I'm through. The fives have done me in. Suddenly Dressen says, 'Isn't this your anniversary? Are you gonna take Betty out and celebrate tonight?'

"I can't believe it. There's seventy thousand people watching, more than lived in Anderson [Indiana] where I grew up, and he's asking me what I'm doing that night. I tell him yes, I was planning on taking Betty someplace quiet.

"'Well,' Dressen says, 'then see if you can't get this game over before it gets dark.'"

Berra followed Mize and drove a fastball into deep right centerfield. Snider, Erskine's roommate, ran hard and leapt prodigiously and caught the ball.

....Johnny Sain relieved Blackwell in the sixth. Sain was Stengel's best reliever -- after the protean Reynolds -- and the Yankees, ahead 5-4, looked in healthy shape. Long John Sain's variety of curves had produced a remarkable career, although he did not become a winner in the major leagues until he was twenty-eight years old. Sain spent six seasons in the minors, then, as [Casey] Stengel knew, served as a Navy test pilot in World War II, learning aerodynamics, which he said deepened his grasp of pitching.. "The stitches on the ball," he said, "like the wings of an airplane, are an airfoil. They can provide lift. Hopping fastball. Or sideslip. Curve and slider."....

With Blackwell gone, Dressen benched Shuba, switched Pafko to left and sent Carl Furillo to play right field. Furillo celebrated with a lead-off double in the sixth, but Campanella and Pafko popped up and Hodges struck out. The big first baseman had come to bat twelve times without hitting safely. Erskine, recovered from The Curse of the Fives, retired the Yankees easily in the sixth. Snider tied the game at 5-all in the seventh, singling home Billy Cox. Then it was Sain and Erskine, the test pilot and the choir boy, matching magnificent efforts. Inning after inning, the Yankees went out in order and at the end of nine innings the teams were still tied.

Sain opened the bottom of the tenth with a grounder to Jackie Robinson's right. Robinson threw to the outfield side of first base. Hodges stretched and the umpire, Art Passarella, called Sain out. Bill Dickey, the first base coach, leaped in indignation. The call stood. Erskine then retired McDougald and Rizzuto.

Cox singled in the eleventh, [Pee Wee] Reese singled him to third. Snider's double to right center sent Cox home. Snider had driven in four runs. The Dodgers led, 6-5.

Mantle rolled back to Erskine. One out in the last of the eleventh. Here came Johnny Mize again. Mize drove another huge liner toward the right field seats. Furillo jumped as though striving for orbit. At the top of his extravagant leap he snared the ball. For the second time a Dodger outfielder had intercepted a home run. [Yogi] Berra stepped up, pumping two bats .... Erskine fanned Berra and broke into a shining smile. He had retired nineteen men in a row. He had beaten the Yankees, 6-5. The Dodgers were one game away from their grail.

A dramatic report reached the press box as the game ended. An Associated Press photograph showed that in the disputed tenth-inning play, Johnny Sain's left spiked shoe was creasing the first-base bag while Robinson's throw was still a yard away from Hodges. And reaching for the ball, Hodges appeared to have taken his foot off the base....

Discussion of the game and the call persisted past the Series, and the umpire, Art Passarella, announced at length that he was "resigning" from the American League staff.

"It turns out," [sportswriter] Dick Young said through a nasty smile, "that Erskine didn't really retire nineteen straight Yankees. He retired eighteen Yankees and one umpire."

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc

University of Nebraska Press

IMAGE: Erskine congratulated by Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson

22. Stats: Managerial Records

Most Years as a Manager

AL: 50, Connie Mack, Philadelphia, 1901-1950

NL: 32, John McGraw, Baltimore, 1899, New York (Giants), 1902-1932

Most Games Won as Manager

AL: 3582, Connie Mack, Philadelphia

NL: 2690, John McGraw, Baltimore and New York

Most Pennants Won as Manager

AL: 10, Casey Stengel, New York (Yankees)

NL: 10, John McGraw, New York (Giants)

Most World Series Won as Manager

AL: 7, Joe McCarthy, New York & Casey Stengel, New York

NL: 4, Walter Alston, Brooklyn/Los Angeles

Most Consecutive Pennants Won as Manager

AL: 5, Casey Stengel, New York, 1949-53

NL: 4, John McGraw, New York, 1921-24

Most Clubs Managed to Pennants

3, Bill McKechnie, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati

3, Dick Williams, Boston, Oakland, San Diego

First Manager to Pilot Pennant Winners in Two Leagues since 1901

Joe McCarthy, Chicago (NL), 1929, New York (AL), 1932

Only Man to Win a Pennant in His Lone Season as a Manager

George Wright, Providence (NL), 1879

Highest Career Winning Percentage as Manager

.615, Joe McCarthy, 24 seasons, 2125 wins and 1333 losses

Great Baseball Feats, Facts, and Firsts, David Nemec

Copyright 1989 by David Nemec

Published by Signet Books (New York), 1989

IMAGE: John McGraw

21. Roger Kahn Reports on the '52 World Series (Part 4)

Allie Reynolds and the Yankees vs. Joe Black and the Dodgers. Yankee Stadium, October 4, 1952. A matchup for the ages, or at least this particular age, when the Yankees, Dodgers (and sometimes the New York Giants) ruled the world. With the Dodgers leading by two games to one, [Yankees Manager Casey] Stengel's choice of Reynolds was automatic....

But Stengel, as usual, drew up plans on many levels. His best-fielding first-baseman was Joe Collins, born Joseph Kollonige in Scranton, a cheerful, friendly man of twenty-nine, a solid .280 hitter in 1952, and a reliable glove. With Reynolds throwing fastballs to (and at) the Dodgers' righthand hitters, there figured to be a lot of action on the right side of the Yankee infield.

Stengel's other first-baseman, John Robert Mize of Demorest, Georgia, thick-armed, cat-eyed Big Jawn Mize, had hit 51 homers as a New York Giant five years earlier. But Mize was slow. He couldn't range to stab grounders and now, after his thirty-ninth birthday, his home-run power seemed buried in the past....

Except ... except he hit one yesterday, off the formidable Preacher Roe. Stengel saw something. Or sensed something. Whatever, he started geriatric Johnny Mize at first base ... and batted Mize cleanup, right between Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, quite a spot for a refugee from the rocking-chair and horseshoe-pitching set....

Reynolds started the first inning by blowing a fastball past Billy Cox. But [Pee Wee] Reese caught up with a fastball and singled to center. Reynolds threw a hard curve to Duke Snider who bounced the ball toward Billy Martin at second. Martin went down to gauge the hops, his spikes caught as he fielded the ball and trying to force Reese at second, he threw into left field and Reese sped to third. First and third for Brooklyn, none out and two tremendous hitters coming up. Both, as it happened, were black.

Reynolds brushed Jackie Robinson, then threw three strikes that Robinson took. Robinson batted aggressively. He struck out seldom. It was rare to see him called out and rarer still to see him called out with a runner on third. Something was happening.

[Roy] Campanella, squat, powerful, little sumo wrestler of a ballplayer, batted fifth. True to his theory, Reynolds threw the first pitch, a 100-mile-an-hour fastball directly at Campanella's head. Campanella lunged to earth. When he arose, Reynolds struck him out.

Black walked Mantle with two out in the first, then retired Mize. Gene Woodling doubled in the second. He did not advance. Reese, emerging star of the Series, singled with two out in the third inning. He had led the National League with 30 steals. Now when he broke for second, Berra threw him out.

The weather was mild and sunny and the Stadium was full, with 71,787 paying customers. Counting the six hundred reporters who looked on without paying, the attendance exceeded 72,000 .... As the game unfolded, the throng sat quietly. There was sometimes a sense at the Stadium that you were gathered with a corporate crowd, deal-makers out for a day in the sun, not ardently concerned with baseball. But this crowd was too vast for easy categorization. Probably the silence expressed the nature of the game -- very quiet and at the same time very tense.

In the fourth inning Black started Mize with a low, breaking ball. Then he threw a good fastball, up and in. The Dodger scouting report said that Mize had trouble connecting with high inside fastballs. As though expecting this particular pitch, Mize swung falling away with the plate, and cracked a blazing line drive into the twentieth row of the lower deck in right. He had hit a fine, rising fastball for his second home run in two games. Casey Stengel pumped a fist and shouted, "Yeah!" The Yankees and Casey Stengel and Allie Reynolds led, 1-0.

The Dodgers were not rattled. They were a dogged, contentious team. As the fifth inning began, the Brooklyn bench began cheering sarcastically when Reynolds threw fastballs for strikes. "Faster, Reynolds. Cut loose. Hey Big Chief, is that as hard as you can throw?" ... The idea was to goad Reynolds really to throw harder, even harder, until at length he threw his arm out, and the Dodgers knocked him out ....

Reynolds glowered. Andy Pafko lined a single. Gil Hodges, having a wretched Series at bat, worked Reynolds for a walk. The Dodger dugout grew louder ....

Carl Furillo, a relentless fastball hitter, drove an outside pitch deep into right centerfield, where Hank Bauer caught up with it. Pafko advanced to third.

The hitter was Joe Black, a fine all-around athlete. [Charles] Dressen, coaching at third, clutched his left shoulder. Black touched the blue bill of his cap. Sign dispatched. Sign acknowledged. Suicide squeeze. Reynolds reared back and fired overhand. Pafko, the tying run, broke for home plate. Black stabbed his bat at a low fastball and missed. Berra tagged out Pafko. Four innings remained, but the game was over.

The Dodger tactic of goading Reynolds to throw harder did half of what was intended. Reynolds did indeed throw harder, even harder. He struck out ten Dodgers, including Robinson three times, and Campanella twice. But he did not throw his arm out. Reynolds faced only fourteen batters over the last four innings. Dressen lifted Black for a pinch hitter in the eighth and the Yankees scored against the relief pitcher, Johnny Rutherford, a slight, skilled righthander, who soon afterwards quit baseball to practice medicine. Mantle hit a long triple off "Doc" Rutherford and scored when the relay from the outfield went wild. Throwing harder, even harder, Reynolds shut out the Dodgers, 2-0. The Series was tied for a second time.

Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
University of Nebraska Press

IMAGE: Allie Reynolds blanks the Dodgers

20. Three and Out

Tragic Angels

The disasters that began afflicting the [California Angels] in 1962 lent an air of spookiness to organization operations. In April of that year, outfielder [Ken] Hunt, who had walloped 25 homers in his rookie season the year before, stood flexing his back on the on-deck circle, snapped his collarbone, and never played a full schedule again. In August, veteran reliever Art Fowler was struck in the face by a line drive during batting practice and lost his vision in one eye. In 1964, a car accident put paid to the promise shown by lefty Ken McBride. That same season, the club paid out $300,000 signing bonuses to college stars Rich Reichardt and Tom Egan, only to have Reichardt's potential thwarted by the loss of a kidney and Egan's by a beanball that broke his jaw and cost him his vision in an eye. In 1965, rookie Dick Wantz pitched himself into the rotation in spring training, but was dead of a brain tumor four months later. In 1968, bullpen ace Minnie Rojas lost his wife and two children, and was himself permanently paralyzed, in an auto accident. Other road accidents killed infielder Chico Ruiz in 1972, reliever Bruce Heinbecher in 1974, and shortstop Mike Miley in 1977. In 1978, Lyman Bostock, one of the league's premier hitters, was shot to death as an innocent bystander. After surrendering a game-tying gopher pitch to Boston's Dave Henderson that eventually turned the tide in favor of the Red Sox in the 1986 LCS, relief specialist Donnie Moore suffered bouts of depression that ended in his suicide.
.

Total Ballclubs, Donald Dewey & Nicholas Acocella

Copyright 2005 by SPORT Media Publishing, Inc.

Published by SPORT Media Publishing, Inc. (Toronto), 2005

It Takes A Thief

Baseball has had its share of unsavory characters, but the game's magnates have always been loath to take on players they know to have a criminal record. In the 1930s, the Washington Senators sent a shudder through the major league community when they scouted and signed a convict named Alabama Pitts. To the relief of most, Pitts proved unable to hit top-caliber pitching. Ron LeFlore recalled memories of Pitts when he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1974. A product of the Motor City ghetto, LeFlore came to the Tigers only after serving a prison stint for armed robbery that made him a persona non grata to most of the other teams in the majors. Tigers skipper Ralph Houk, though, swiftly recognized that the fleet LeFlore was the answer to the club's center field hole. In 1976, LeFlore's second full season, he led the club in hitting with a .316 batting average. Two years later he paced the American League in runs and stolen bases. Convicted of thievery, LeFlore spent nine years in the majors being paid for being a thief, swiping an average of 50 bases a season.
.

1001 Fascinating Baseball Facts, David Nemec & Peter Palmer

Copyright 1993 by Publications International, Ltd.

Published by Longmeadow Press (Stanford, CT), 1994

The Death of Ray Chapman

On August 16, 1920, the Cleveland Indians were in first place, albeit by just a few percentage points, and making their third and final visit of the season to the Polo Grounds, then the cavernous home of both the New York Giants and the New York Yankees. Facing Cleveland on that day was Yankees ace Carl Mays. An ethereal fog that hung over the Polo Grounds had been complicated by a drizzle by the time shortstop Ray Chapman led off the fifth inning for Cleveland. Mays' best pitch was delivered with an underhand sweep. Down went his body and out shot his arm from the blur of white shirts and dark suits in the open bleachers in the deep background behind him. The pitch struck Chapman in the temple and killed him -- from all indications he never saw it. As a consequence of the only on-the-field fatality in major league history, dirty or scuffed balls thereafter were discarded immediately from play and patrons were no longer allowed to sit in the center field bleachers. Mays was quickly exonerated from any wrongdoing but the following season fell under suspicion of throwing the 1921 World Series. This, more than the Chapman incident, would haunt him the rest of his days.
.

1001 Fascinating Baseball Facts, David Nemec & Peter Palmer

Copyright 1993 by Publications International, Ltd.

Published by Longmeadow Press (Stanford, CT), 1994

19. Roger Kahn Reports the 1952 World Series (Part 3)

After the two games in Brooklyn, the Series moved without interruption to Yankee Stadium, the most majestic and renowned baseball ballpark on earth. Three tiers of seats surrounded much of the playing field. The triple-tiered stands rose steeply and rather darkly. Ballplayers, trained to ignore their surroundings ... admitted feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the place. From the roof of the topmost deck, a filigreed facade -- trademark of an architectural style and the New York Yankees -- commanded the eye. Municipal Stadium in Cleveland held more fans. Fenway Park in Boston and Ebbets Field placed spectators closer to the action. But huge, idiosyncratic Yankee Stadium was the great Coliseum of Baseball, as the Yankees were the Imperial rulers of the game.

....Lefthanded pitching was the order of this Friday afternoon. [Yankees manager Casey] Stengel started Ed Lopat, born Edmund Lopatynski, nicknamed Steady Eddie, a stocky native New Yorker, once a movie usher, thirty-four years old, who threw off-speed stuff. Since seven Dodger regulars batted righthanded, Lopat was embarking on perilous seas. "But in our ballpark,"Stengel said, "them righthanders can hit them long flies to left center all day, and my excellent outfielders will run and catch them."

[Dodgers manager Charlie] Dressen chose tall, angular Elwin Charles Roe, called Preacher, who was born in Ash Flat, Arkansas, the son of an Ozark doctor and who pretty much embodied the Arkansas country slicker. Roe mixed four or five pitches, including a spitball, which he spotted in clutch situations. He had shut out the Yankees in the 1949 World Series, baffling even the Bronx household god, Joe DiMaggio.

It came up chilly on Friday and both Roe and Lopat scrambled in the cold. The Yankees got a run in the second; the Dodgers tied the score in the third and went ahead with a run in the fifth. Fidgeting, concentrating on the mound, Roe reminded Red Smith of an underfed and underpaid country school teacher. Lopat, in contrast, "had the prosperous appearance that goes with chubby people, such a venal aldermen from the west side of Chicago."

[Jackie] Robinson opened the eighth with a looping single to center. [Roy] Campanella singled to left and Robinson slid into third ahead of Gene Woodling's throw. Andy Pafko's fly to left field scored Robinson. The Dodgers now led, 3-1; they were more than one home run ahead.

Not for long. [Yogi] Berra cracked a line drive into the lower deck in right, and Roe kicked a heel against the mound. He threw a fair number of home-run balls, but rarely when the game was close. In tight quarters Roe went with his humid fork ball. Dodger fans perspired in the chill.

[Pee Wee] Reese singled in the ninth for his third hit and when Robinson followed with another single, Stengel trudged to the mound, and summoned a rookie righthander named Tom Gorman. Lopat had yielded ten hits and four walks. Fifteen baserunners, but he had allowed only three runs. Not much style, but extraordinary grit.

Gorman got two strikes on Andy Pafko. He was concentrating on the batter and as he threw again, Reese broke from second base and Robinson broke from first. A double steal.

The pitch came in hard, low, inside, a sinker, a ball. It struck Berra on the top of the left index finger. Berra caught with that finger outside the glove. Berra blinked in pain, then couldn't find the baseball, which was rolling fifty feet away in foul territory. Reese and Robinson, the best baserunners in baseball, scored. The Dodger lead was comfortable, 5-2.

Johnny Mize pinch hit a home run in the last of the ninth, but the game had slipped out of the Yankees' reach. The Dodgers took a lead in the Series, two games to one, with this 5-3 victory.

In dressing rooms today, sizable areas remain off-limits to interviewers .... There were no such restrictions in baseball's golden days. All dressing rooms, winners' and losers', were opened within five minutes of a game's end, and inside there was no place to hide. If you were man enough to make the major leagues, you had to be man enough to talk to reporters, win or lose. I went to the Brooklyn dressing room first, giving the Yankees time to compose themselves.

I asked Charlie Dressen what prompted him to risk sending Reese and Robinson to steal in the ninth inning of a one-run Series game. "I didnt' get prompted," he said. "They did it on their own. The two of them, I let 'em run whenever they want. They know how to play."

In the Yankee dressing room, platoons of writers asked Berra what happened. He had collected three hits, half the Yankee total, smashed an eighth-inning homer and here he was, wearing goat's horns, because everyone was assuming that the two-run passed ball cost his team the game. "Without it," someone said, "Johnny Mize's homer ties the score."

"Mebbe not," said wise old Preacher Roe, back on the Brooklyn side. "See in that situation, with us ahead by three, I didn't care if Mize hit a homer. I wanted to get him out, sure, but mostly I don't want to walk the big feller. I want bases empty. I want to pitch out of my full windup. Now without that passed ball, say Pee Wee and Jack don't score. Then we got what. . .a one-run game? You've seen me work all year. You know I wouldn't be pitching the same to Mize if we only had a one-run lead."

It would have been time for the humid fork ball that no one hit well.

The Yankees, with their studied sense of style, established the press playpen -- hospitality headquarters -- in the Grand Ballroom of the fashionable Hotel Biltmore....

It would be [Allie] Reynolds against [Joe] Black again tomorrow. "This is the way the World Series is supposed to be, [Red] Smith said. "Uncertain and competitive."

I said, one thing did seem certain; we were going to look at a well-pitched game. But I was thinking about our dinner in the Biltmore, which would be free, and the baseball talk ahead, all in the service of my job, and I remembered the title John Lardner put on a collection of sports columns.

It Beats Working.


Memories of Summer, Roger Kahn
Copyright 1997 Hook Slide, Inc.
University of Nebraska Press

18. The Return of Joe DiMaggio

It was 1949, a bright summer morning late in June, and in his room at the Edison Hotel in Manhattan, Joe DiMaggio rolled out of bed. When he gingerly lowered his right foot to the floor, the incessant, stabbing pain [from bone spurs] in his heel that had dogged him for the past couple of years had miraculously vanished in the night ....

An operation had been performed to correct the condition over the winter, and the doctors had told him the problem had been cured. Yet when he tried to practice during spring training, there were days when the heel pained him so badly that his lips flowed blood, he was biting them so hard. While his teammates were getting into shape for the coming season, he would sit for hours on the beach of his bungalow home on the Gulf of Mexico, staring at the horizon and at the lapping waves, wondering if and when the pain would ever go away. Before spring camp broke, he finally agreed to return to John Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore for another operation.

DiMaggio, always a distant person, became morose and especially ill-tempered from the discomfort he was in .... When he moved to New York his whereabouts were kept from the public and the press .... DiMaggio disconnected his phone in the Edison Hotel and tried to hide.

In his hotel room he lay in bed and watched the Yankees on television, the new electronic marvel of the day, and he would umpire the pitches on the screen trying to retain his batting eye. But the angle of the camera was misleading and when DiMaggio saw he was consistently calling the pitches incorrectly, he began to fear that he was losing his batting eye ....

Through the months of April and May and much of June, DiMaggio remained in seclusion, waiting for the pain in his heel to subside as the doctors had promised it would. He really didn't believe them until the sunny morning in June when he arose to find that the pain had finally disappeared.

June 28 was a sunny afternoon in Boston, and though the heat had eased for the past couple of days, still there was no rain to bring relief to the parched Massachusetts Bay city. On street corners newsboys hawking the Herald and the Globe and the Record were announcing that Joe DiMaggio would be playing in the upcoming three-game series beginning here tonight, his initial appearance of the season after having missed the first sixty-five games....

There were bad feelings between the Yankees and the Red Sox, and more than thirty-six thousand people, the largest crowd ever to attend a night game in Fenway Park history, were crunched into the little antiquated Boston bandbox to see the matched skills of the two teams.

Inside the Yankee clubhouse, in the bowels of the park beneath the stands, there was an uncharacteristic revelry. DiMaggio, a man who rarely joined in the pranks or the joking, preferring instead to remain aloof, wrestled with Charlie Keller and clowned with Phil Rizzuto. He displayed an unconcealed joy just to be playing again, and his teammates could feel a lightening of their load by his mere presence. Without DiMaggio they would not have been able to survive over the long, protracted schedule, but with him back, they now had a real chance....

The Yankees jumped out to a quick three-nothing lead in the second inning on a home run. In the third inning Phil Rizzuto singled, and then DiMaggio, standing at the plate with his feet spread wide and parallel, his bat held back and stock still, snapped his wrists at a fast ball and pulled it on a high arc into the screen which tops the six-story high, left-field wall for two more runs. Rizzuto, on first, started jumping up and down as he raced around the bases, shouting, "Holy cow, holy cow," and after DiMaggio rounded third and loped toward the plate, the rest of the Yankees met him and escorted him back to the dugout....

DiMaggio had less dramatically demonstrated his leadership in other ways. Early in the game Johnny Pesky, the combative Red Sox second-baseman, raced from first to second base trying to break up a double play on a ground ball hit to second-baseman Coleman. Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto raced to second to take the pivot, fearlessly firing to first to complete the play. As he did, Pesky slid into him with a hard rolling block, tumbling the little shortstop to the ground, kneeing him in the face, and knocking him unconscious for several minutes. The shaken Rizzuto was able to continue, and by the eighth inning most of the specators had forgotten the incident when DiMaggio led off the inning for the Yankees with a walk. The next batter hit a ground ball to the infield, and Red Sox shortstop Vern Stephans glided over toward second to take the throw. As he did so DiMaggio threw a vicious block at Stephans, hurtling him to the ground and separating him from the ball and most of his senses. The Boston fans booed the play, but DiMaggio was only retaliating, giving notice to Pesky and any of the others that if there was going to be any funny business, they would have to answer to him personally.

Another large crowd arrived for the second contest of the series and there was much whooping and hollering when the Red Sox opened a 7-1 lead after only four innings. DiMaggio, who awoke stiff and swollen legged, was having a more difficult time .... In the fifth inning two men reached base before DiMaggio came to bat, and for the second time in two days he snapped a fast ball for a home run making the score 7-4 and drawing a nice hand from the Boston crowd. The Yankees scratched out three more runs to tie the score at 7-7. There were two outs in the eighth inning when DiMaggio dragged himself to the plate. After taking the first pitch, he pulled a high curve ball and lined [it] a good ten feet above the Fenway Park wall and screen for a third home run and the ball game. [Casey] Stengel bounded up the steps of the dugout at the crack of the bat, and as DiMaggio unemotionally glided around the bases, the Yankee manager raised his arms high and began bowing like a Moslem praising Allah. In the stands the deafening ovation for DiMaggio transcended all partisan lines ....

Afterward in the crowded, sweaty visitors' locker room, the reporters mobbed around DiMaggio's locker. Many of these men had predicted that DiMaggio would never play again, and they were staring at him in unprofessional awe. One asked, "Joe, you only had eight workouts before you came here. You've hit three home runs in two games. What's the secret?"

DiMaggio, exhausted, sitting back in his locker sipping beer, considered the question and somberly answered between sips, "You merely swing the bat and hit the ball."

Dynasty: The New York Yankees, 1949-1964, Peter Golenbock

Copyright 1975 by Peter Golenbock

Published by Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1975