Monk Dubiel

Raised in “the tenements of Hartford,”1 Walter “Monk” Dubiel rose from hardscrabble roots to  seven-year career in the major leagues that began during World War II after he was declared 4-F because of an eye ailment. It ended eight years later after a series of injuries.

His memorable nickname, “Monk,” had a colorful but perhaps fanciful origin, as told by legendary sportswriter Dan Daniel: “Dubiel gained his nickname of ‘Monk’ at Akron. When the 200-pound pitcher reported, the only available uniform was so small for him that when he took the field, his mates said he looked like ‘an organ grinder’s monkey.’”2

However, in a 1948 interview, Dubiel said he’d been called Monk since he was “a tiny lad,” and didn’t know how it began.3 Other stories often used the nickname “Hot Dog” for Dubiel, but the origin of that nickname has yet to be uncovered.4

A six-foot righty, Dubiel apparently didn’t have overwhelming stuff. His success, when he had it, was attributed by Daniel to his “moxie”: “There is nothing freakish about Dubiel. He features a curve, a fast ball, a letup, control. No sinker, no slider, no knuckler, no screwball. Just the old-fashioned, orthodox, regulation pitching curriculum, administered with plenty of what the players call moxie, and dished out with determination and spirit.”5

Despite the above report of “no sinker,” two months earlier that same sportswriter credited Dubiel with “a baffling sinker,”6 and other reports indicate it was his primary pitch. Stan Baumgartner said Dubiel “tied the New York Giants in knots with his famous ‘sinker,’”7 and a 1949 column called the sinker ball Dubiel’s “chief stock in trade.”8 J.G. Taylor Spink described it in 1948 as “a sizzling fast ball that sinks,” and also said Dubiel had “a fine overhand curve and in the last two years has learned to throw a fork ball which he uses sparingly.”9

Walter John Dubiel was born on February 12, 1918, in Hartford, Connecticut. His parents were Karol Dubiel, a teamster, and Mary (née Maziarz), both of whom were born in Poland. He had three siblings: Josephine and Stanley preceded him; James followed.

When Dubiel was five years old, in August 1923, his father died amid sad circumstances. Karol had been jailed on a charge of drunkenness (it was not his first such arrest). Despondent, he hanged himself in his cell with his own suspenders. The story was front-page news in the Hartford Courant.10

In the wake of the tragedy, Mary Dubiel and her children were left penniless. She worked early mornings and late nights as a cleaner for an insurance company. Dubiel, still a boy, said he contributed as best he could, delivering newspapers and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. Because his mother couldn’t afford coal for the furnace or firewood for the cooking stove, he and his brother woke up at dawn to walk along Hartford’s train tracks to collect lumps of coal and forage for wood. He said he frequently got into fights and, at age 28, still had a “a big knot the size of a cherry” on his wrist; he’d broken it punching a larger boy in the jaw.11

Growing up approximately halfway between New York City and Boston, Dubiel said there were plenty of Yankee fans in Hartford, but he preferred the Red Sox. He said his favorite player was Jimmie Foxx.12

Dubiel attended Hartford Public High School and said he had “college ambitions” – with thoughts of Trinity College or Yale University – but didn’t play for the school team. “Even in school, I had done no ball playing. I could not afford the time. I had to be up at five in the morning, on my newspaper route, and by the time I had finished with my lessons, I was so tired I couldn’t stay awake. So you will find no school pitching record in my history.”13

He said his first chance to play “on a uniformed club” came when he was watching a church league game, and one team was short a player. Dubiel was asked to play. “He wondered, ‘Should a Roman Catholic play on a Methodist team?’ He thought for a moment, but the desire to play ball was stronger than any inhibitions he might have.”14

He dropped out of high school as a sophomore: “I had to go to work and support my mother.”15 At age 16, he walked 12 miles to fill out his application at the Hartford Rayon Corporation and was hired at 28 cents an hour. Hartford Rayon had a baseball team, but Dubiel was deemed too small and was regarded “more of a batboy than a player.” He finally got his chance when the team’s pitcher developed a sore arm, and Dubiel threw a three-hitter.16 

Dubiel continued pitching for club and industrial teams in the Hartford area, including the powerful St. Cyril’s Baseball Club of the Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League.17 In 1939, he was hired at $50 a month, plus room and board, to work at the Hartford Hospital (and play for their baseball team). When Hartford Hospital won the industrial championship that year, Dr. Thomas Hepburn – Katharine Hepburn’s father – organized a banquet in Dubiel’s honor.18

In 1941, Dubiel’s pitching success attracted the attention of the Yankees, Cardinals, and Indians, but not his Red Sox. Even so, Dubiel said three years later, he would have taken the best offer regardless of which team made it.19 Legendary Yankees scout Paul Krichell offered him $75 a month with no signing bonus – the Indians, $100 a month and a $500 bonus. He told the Yankees he was signing with Cleveland but lied about the figures, saying it was $150 a month and a $1,000 bonus. “We’ll meet that,” Krichell said. “Don’t sign until I get there.”20

After signing with the Yankees, Dubiel was assigned to the Akron Yankees in the Middle Atlantic League,21 but a month later was reassigned to the Newark Bears.22 Dubiel said the Yankees then “shifted” him to the Erie Sailors, an independent team in the Middle Atlantic League, and that he went 14-6 with a 2.47 ERA.23

He began 1942 with the Binghamton Triplets in the Eastern League, but after a month, Dubiel got word that his brother had been drafted and was soon reporting for duty. Dubiel asked Binghamton manager Eddie Sawyer for permission to go home to Hartford to see his brother off, but Sawyer refused. Dubiel, angered because other players in similar situations had been granted leave, went anyway. When he returned, Sawyer suspended him for two weeks, then had him demoted to the Norfolk Tars in the Piedmont League. “There I was happier,” Dubiel said. “I began to pitch.”24

Dubiel had an outstanding season with the Tars, going 13-5 with a 1.62 ERA and 1.013 WHIP in 150 innings; he also hit .346 in 52 at-bats. One highlight that season was a 9-0 win over the Richmond Colts, managed by Ben Chapman, who would be his manager six years later with the Phillies. “Son, you must be a good pitcher,” Chapman told him after the game, “because we got every sign from your catcher and we still couldn’t hit you.”25

In 1943, after an apparently erroneous report that Dubiel was taking a leave from baseball for a defense job,26 he was called home to Hartford by the draft board. On April 23, Dubiel called the Yankees to report he had been rejected and the following day returned to the Bears.27 Later reports were that Dubiel had been classified 4-F because of an eye cataract.28

Dubiel had an excellent season for Newark, going 16-9 with a 2.02 ERA and 1.063 WHIP in 192 innings with a no-hitter.29 However, neither his services nor those of any other minor-league pitcher were required in the Bronx – the Yankees won 98 games and beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series with just 11 pitchers. Eight of the 11 returned from the 1942 squad that had lost to those same Redbirds; the exceptions were rookies Tommy Byrne and Butch Wensloff, who made the team that year out of spring training, and veteran Bill Zuber, acquired prior to the season in a trade with Washington.

While in Newark, Dubiel reportedly lost his meal money while on a road trip in Baltimore.30 Rather than ask a teammate for a loan or the club secretary for an advance, he woke up early and spent the morning earning it back: “I made four bucks washin’ cars. That carried me over until the next day when I got some more meal money from the club,” Dubiel later recalled.31

After the season, he married Peggy Wong, his childhood sweetheart, on November 6, 1943.32

Heading into the 1944 season, the defending world champion Yankees were concerned about losing players – not to other teams but to the war effort.  Between 1942 and 1944, no less than 18 players had been plucked off New York’s roster for military service.33 With his 4-F classification, Dubiel was one of just eight players manager Joe McCarthy said he was certain to have.

“We have just eight sure things on our list. All the rest are open to conjecture,” McCarthy said prior to spring training in 1944. “The eight are Jim Turner, over age, Ed Levy, who was discharged from the Coast Guard last year, and six men in 4-F – Atley Donald, Bud Metheny, George Stirnweiss, and three acquisitions from the Bears, Don Savage, outfielder-infielder, and Joe Page and Walter Dubiel, pitchers. I have been asked to name a tentative lineup. Now, how is that possible?”34

With all those players trading their pinstripes for uniforms, the Yankees brought 16 new players to camp, including Dubiel. “The dope is that Dubiel, who won 16 and lost nine, with an earned-run mark of 2.02 with the Bears last year, is the best prospect. He is a horse for work, a powerfully-built young man, who is 4-F because of an eye cataract,” Daniel wrote in The Sporting News.35

“Monk Dubiel’s hands are bigger than those dangling at the end of Honus Wagner’s long arms,” sportswriter Sam Davis wrote from Yankee camp. “While he has the stuff to pitch, Dubiel, a formidable hitter, would prefer to be an outfielder. He can’t forget a catch he made as a Hartford semi-pro against the Enfield Prison team.”36

Dubiel’s debut in the second game of an April 19 doubleheader was a 5-2 loss against his boyhood favorite team, the Red Sox, at Fenway Park; he gave up five runs on 11 hits and five walks in eight innings.37 But he bounced back with two scoreless relief appearances followed by a complete game 10-2 win over the Chicago White Sox.38 Later in the year he reeled off five straight complete game victories capped by a five-hit shutout of the Philadelphia Athletics on September 439 that gave the Yankees a half-game lead over the St. Louis Browns in the pennant race. Two weeks later those same A’s swept the Yankees in a three-game series to leave them two games out with 14 games left to play. The Yankees split those 14 games while the Browns went 11-2 to win the franchise’s only pennant while in St. Louis.

Overall, Dubiel was 13-13 with a 3.38 ERA and 1.306 WHIP in 232 innings in his rookie year. He returned in 1945 as a mainstay in the Yankee rotation, winning his season debut on April 19 over the Red Sox.40

Dubiel had a disappointing June: he went 1-2 in four starts and a relief appearance, allowing 16 runs (15 earned) on 26 hits and 13 walks in 23 2/3 innings. That prompted Daniel to included Dubiel in his list of “spotty” performances of late by Yankee pitchers. “Walter Dubiel has been an in-and-outer, and it would seem that he hasn’t the mental and physical attributes for development into the sort of hurler his freshman year hinted he might be,” Daniel wrote.41

July was no more forgiving to Dubiel, as he went 1-2 with a 6.53 ERA, and then 2-2 with a 6.84 ERA in August. He finished strongly – 4-0 with a 2.89 ERA in his final four starts and three relief appearances – to salvage his season with a 10-9 mark. That proved to be his only major-league season with a winning record. He posted a 4.64 ERA and 1.447 WHIP in 151 1/3 innings.

Dubiel started the 1946 season with the Yankees, but on May 8 was sent back to Newark without getting into a game.42 He caught up to the Bears while on the road for a series at Rochester against the Red Wings. The team was expecting Dubiel – but not the squat 21-year-old catcher with him “who looked like a young fellow whom Dubiel might have hired to carry his luggage.”43 Dubiel would spend the rest of the 1946 season in Newark; Yogi Berra was in Yankee Stadium by September.44

Dubiel, by then 28, went 9-7 with a 4.54 ERA and 1.416 WHIP in 125 innings for the Bears. In December, the Yankees sold his contract to the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League.45 There in 1947 he was 15-17 with a 3.88 ERA and 1.300 WHIP in 260 innings. On November 10, the Philadelphia Phillies took him the second overall pick in the Rule 5 draft.46

Dubiel opened the 1948 season in the starting rotation, with mixed results. The highlights were a three-hit shutout of the New York Giants on May 1547 and, nine days later, retiring the first 18 men he faced against the St. Louis Cardinals before yielding a single to Red Schoendienst to lead off the top of the seventh. (That was soon followed by a Stan Musial home run, ending the shutout.)48 But he also lasted just 1 2/3 innings in his first start of the season on April 24,49 and in a rematch against the Giants on May 29, he was pounded for six runs on nine hits and four walks in seven innings.50

After Dubiel opened the season 4-3 with a 3.79 ERA in nine starts and one relief appearance through June 13, Phillies manager Chapman moved him to the bullpen. However, in seven relief appearances and one start, Dubiel allowed 14 runs on 21 hits and 10 walks in 23 innings.

In mid-July Chapman was out as manager. After a brief interim stint by Dusty Cooke, Sawyer – who with Binghamton in 1942 had suspended, then demoted Dubiel – took over on July 26.51 Apparently forgiving the hurler for going AWOL, Sawyer showed more faith in Dubiel than his predecessor, frequently calling on him in tight spots.

“Dubiel’s performance is particularly impressive in view of the fact that Ben Chapman considered him a ‘bust’ as a relief hurler. And the former manager was not without reasons for his feeling. The first day Sawyer took charge, however, he said, ‘Dubiel is my ace in the hole as a relief twirler…’ There were some who shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘He’ll learn.’ But Sawyer insisted that Dubiel had been a great fireman for him at Binghamton. The pilot’s confidence was reflected in Dubiel’s work.”52

A different kind of highlight from that season came on August 22, when Dubiel was presented with an automobile and a silver service set donated by 1,000 fans from Hartford, including Arthur B. McGinley, longtime sports editor of the Hartford Times. The presentation was prior to a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds against the New York Giants, who showered Dubiel with some “gifts” of their own – eight runs (six earned) on nine hits and two walks in just three innings. Dubiel “worried so much about the speech he would make before the microphone that he did not sleep the night before.”53

After the season, Dubiel was traded to the Chicago Cubs along with knuckleballer Dutch Leonard for first baseman Eddie Waitkus and former Yankee Hank Borowy. The deal was closed over a plate of sandwiches, according to Phillies owner Bob Carpenter Jr. Had lunch not been served, the deal may have been done with the Brooklyn Dodgers instead.

Cubs general manager James T. Gallagher had an appointment in his hotel suite to talk trade with Branch Rickey of the Dodgers, and ordered some sandwiches to be delivered. Carpenter arrived before Rickey and helped himself to some lunch – and a trade. “There wasn’t much left when Rickey arrived on schedule,” The Sporting News reported. “He got a few crumbs – but no ballplayers.”54

Sportswriter Ed Burns called it a “rather surprising transaction,” adding that “Dubiel was the man the Cubs were after.”55 But Leonard, an All-Star for the Cubs in 1951, would find more success in Chicago than Dubiel. In four injury-plagued seasons, Dubiel was 14-21 with a 3.85 ERA and 1.400 WHIP, missing time each season with “every manner of ailment and injury,”56 including an ear infection,57 recurring hip and back issues, and a line drive off his elbow. The latter injury came on July 6, 1949, in one of the biggest losses in Cubs’ history – though Dubiel didn’t get the L.

Facing the Reds at Crosley Field on a 99-degree day, Dubiel gave up a single to Harry Walker in the bottom of the first, then retired Bobby Adams on a pop-up. The next batter, Peanuts Lowrey – who along with Walker had been acquired by the Reds from the Cubs just three weeks before – scorched a line drive that hit Dubiel in the right elbow58 and bounced to third baseman Frankie Gustine, who scooped it up and threw to shortstop Roy Smalley Jr. to force out Walker at second base. Dubiel had to leave the game, and reliever Warren Hacker then allowed three straight singles and a walk to make it 2-0 before getting the third out of the inning. Hacker and a succession of Cubs relievers then allowed another 21 runs over the remainder of the game.59 Even though the first run had been charged to Dubiel, and the Reds never relinquished the lead, official scorer Tom Swope charged the loss to Hacker instead of Dubiel.60

A start a year later against the Phillies, on July 26, 1950, led to a public squabble between Dubiel and his manager, Frankie Frisch. Pitching with a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the sixth, Dubiel gave up two hits and six walks – including four in a row with the bases loaded – in the 6-4 loss.61 At one point, Dubiel threw 14 straight balls, with the Phillies fans booing Frisch as he sat in the dugout without warming up a reliever.62 Dubiel blamed his control woes on his shoulder, hit by a Granny Hamner line drive earlier in the game and stiffening as the game progressed.63 When the Cubs came to bat in the top of the seventh and Frisch went to the third-base coaching box, the Phillies’ fans “tossed cushions and other debris onto the field in protest of Frisch’s tactics.”64

After the game, Frisch accused Dubiel of “looking over his shoulder, toward the bullpen, waiting for help. I’m sick of watching some pitcher getting into jams, then peeping out to the bullpen to see if a reliever is ready to take over his work for him,” Frisch said.65

Dubiel’s bad luck with injuries continued in 1952, even before the season began. While in spring training in Arizona, he was hit in the face by a line drive off the bat of Hank Sauer during a pepper game. “Walt was changing positions in the game and Hank didn’t notice him crossing over in front of the other players,” The Sporting News reported. “It was just another in a series of mishaps for the Monk, since coming to the Cubs originally from the Phillies in December 1948. He has been sidelined at various intervals with a hip injury, an ear infection and a recurring back ailment.”66

Dubiel would get into just one game with the Cubs in 1952, retiring two batters while allowing a hit in an 8-2 blowout on April 29.67 He then spent the rest of that season in the minors with the Los Angeles Angels and the Springfield Cubs. After the season was over, the Cubs traded him to the Milwaukee Braves for veteran pitcher Sheldon Jones, but the Braves never called him up from the minors. He pitched in 1953 and 1954 for their Triple-A affiliate, the Toledo Sox, reuniting with his old Bears manager George Selkirk. He was released prior to the 1955 season.

Dubiel’s final action as a baseball player, at least as chronicled by The Sporting News, was on July 19, 1964, when he pitched in an Old-Timers Day game in Springfield, Massachusetts, prior to a game between the Springfield Giants and Williamsport Mets. The game was between former American and National League players; the 46-year-old Dubiel qualified for either team, but the former Yankee pitched for the Americans, as did Eastern League President Rankin Johnson Jr., who had pitched 10 innings for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1941. The AL won, 2-0, with Williamsport manager Ernie White, formerly a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Braves, taking the loss.68

Dubiel died October 23, 1969, of cirrhosis of the liver at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.69 He was 51. His wife, Peggy, had died the previous year on July 5, 1968. According to her obituary, they had two children, Walter J. Dubiel, Jr., and Alan R. Dubiel.70

“Although Dubiel had the equipment to be a topflight hurler, he never seemed to reach his true level,” read his obituary in The Sporting News, citing his hip, back, ear, and eye issues.71

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Kim Juhase and checked for accuracy by members of SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credit: Walt “Monk” Dubiel, Trading Card Database.

Sources

Findagrave.com (family background)

Newspapers.com

Notes

1 J.G. Taylor Spink, “Looping the Loops: Washed Up? They Didn’t Know Dubiel,” The Sporting News, June 23, 1948: 2.

2 Dan Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee: Mixes Plenty of Moxie with Pitching Magic,” The Sporting News, June 29, 1944: 3.

3 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

4 Dubiel was often referred to in newspapers as Walter, Walt, or Wally, but when a nickname was used, “Hot Dog” was used almost as frequently as “Monk.” The earliest appearance of the Monk nickname in print is in an Associated Press story on May 6, 1942, that ran in several newspapers, including on Page 17 of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. Hot Dog is used for the first time in the April 9, 1944, issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (page 19): “Walter (Hot Dog) Dubiel, who seems to be the prize of all the new Bomber pitchers, allowed only one run as he turned in his second five-inning job within eight days.”

5 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.”

6 Dan Daniel, “Yank Outlook Brightens on Delay in Calling Vets,” The Sporting News, April 20, 1944: 17.

7 Stan Baumgartner, “Two Rookies Keep Blue Jays in Limelight,” The Sporting News, June 2, 1948: 16.

8 Sports Sputtering column, the Sunbury (Pennsylvania) Daily Item, April 20, 1949: 23. Comparing Cincinnati Reds prospect Ralph Vazquez to Dubiel: “Baseball veterans who took a look-see at Vasquez [sic] down Frederick way couldn’t get over the striking resemblance between the two, even to the sinker ball… chief stock in trade of the pair… Reds fans will be satisfied if the 21-year-old Aguadillian turns out 75 per cent as able as the Cubs’ right-hander.” Vazquez pitched in the minors for the Reds in 1949 and 1950, but never reached the majors.

9 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

10 “Prisoner Hangs Self in Headquarters Cell,” Hartford Courant, August 6, 1923: 1.

11 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

12 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.” “Back in my kid days in Hartford, the star of stars was Babe Ruth. Another Yankee hero was Lou Gehrig. But I was not a Yankee rooter. On the contrary. I said, ‘That club keeps right on taking everything in sight. It’s about time some other club, like the Red Sox, got a shot at the World Series.’”

13 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee: Mixes Plenty of Moxie with Pitching Magic.”

14 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

15 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.”

16 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

17 The Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League, founded in 1929, is a wood bat summer baseball league that has sent scores of alumni to the major leagues, including Jeff Bagwell, Rob Dibble, and Bernie Williams. Dubiel is a member of the league’s Hall of Fame. The St. Cyril’s Baseball Club was a team predominantly of Polish-Americans, and according to Spink, in the column cited in Endnote #1, Dubiel’s parents were Polish immigrants. (Dubiel also clarified his last name was Dubiel, “not Dubielsky as some think.”) St. Cyril’s won the Connecticut District Semi-Pro Title in 1940.

18 Spink, “Looping the Loops.” St. Cyril organized a banquet to honor Dubiel, but he went to the movies instead. When he also failed to appear at the Hartford Hospital banquet, organizers found him pitching a game for another team. They waited until after the game and then “brought him back in his baseball uniform to honor him.” 

19 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.”

20 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”.

21 “Akron Training Crew of 25 Lists Only Three Holdovers,” The Sporting News, April 10, 1941: 8.

22 Lincoln Hakim, “Akron Head of 1940 Pace, And It Wound Up with Flag,” The Sporting News, May 29, 1941: 16.

23 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.” There are no stats for Dubiel available from his Baseball-Reference.com Register page for any team in 1941, but a number of box scores and game recaps place him with Erie that season, including a game recap in The Sporting News on August 28, 1941 (page 12) that said Erie’s Dubiel hit Mel Hofmeister of the Youngstown Browns with a pitched ball on August 20; Hofmeister was rushed to the hospital with a suspected fractured skull. Hofmeister recovered well enough to play the following two seasons, then again in 1948.

24 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.”

25 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

26 “Newark Loses Six Players,” The Sporting News, April 1, 1943: 8.

27 Cy Kritzer, “Leafs Get Zak and Kiner,” The Sporting News, April 29, 1943: 7.

28 Dan Daniel, “Yankees’ Flag Craft, Battered by Draft, Being Rebolted with Recruits,” The Sporting News, April 13, 1944: 7.

29 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.” Dubiel said the no-hitter for Newark was against the Syracuse Chiefs.

30 Daniel, “Dubiel Rings Bell in Bow as Yankee.”

31 “Obituary of Walter (Monk) Dubiel,” The Sporting News, November 8, 1969: 46. Billy Meyer, who had been Dubiel’s manager with the Bears in 1943, told a story about a similar situation, but it happened in Rochester and Dubiel hadn’t lost his meal money but had sent it home along, as he did with much of his salary. One morning Dubiel woke up early and after about two hours “came back to order one of the biggest breakfasts on record” after making $2.25 washing four cars. (“Dubiel’s Before-Breakfast Workout,” The Sporting News, June 9, 1948: 8.)

32 Spink, “Looping the Loops.”

33 In 1942, first baseman Johnny Sturm was drafted by the Army. In 1943, Joe DiMaggio and Red Ruffing went to the Army, Tommy Henrich and Aaron Robinson to the Coast Guard, and Buddy Hassett and Phil Rizzuto to the Navy; and in 1944, Spud Chandler, Joe Gordon, Billy Johnson, Marius Russo, Roy Weatherly, and Butch Wensloff to the Army, Charlie Keller to the Merchant Marines, Tommy Byrne, Bill Dickey, and Rollie Helmsley to the Navy, and Johnny Murphy to the Manhattan Project. In addition, numerous minor leaguers served, including Yogi Berra, Jerry Coleman, Joe Collins, Randy Gumpert, Spec Shea, and Vic Raschi. See also: Marc Z. Aaron, “The New York Yankees in Wartime” in Who’s on First: Replacement Players in World War II (Phoenix, Society for American Baseball Research, 2015).

34 Dan Daniel, “Ed Barrow Urges Gag; Marse Joe Bans Trade,” The Sporting News, February 10, 1944: 4.

35 Daniel, “Yankees’ Flag Craft.”

36 Sam Davis, “Can’t Tell Yankees Without Scorecard,” Newspaper Enterprise Association. Published in the Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune, March 31, 1944: 7.

37 New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox, April 19, 1944.

38 Chicago White Sox vs. New York Yankees, May 15, 1944.

39 Philadelphia Athletics vs. New York Yankees, September 4, 1944.

40 Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees, April 19, 1945. Dubiel was a perfect 6-0 with five complete games in six starts against the Red Sox in 1945. 

41 Dan Daniel, “Battery Boost for Yankees on Return to Home Roost,” The Sporting News, July 5, 1945: 8.

42 Associated Press, “Yanks Release Dubiel to Newark Farm Club,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 9, 1946: 17.

43 Ernest Havemann, “Why Pitchers Get Nervous.” Life Magazine, July 11, 1949: 72

44 Bears manager George Selkirk had been told to expect Dubiel, but not Berra. According to Bobby Brown, the Bears third baseman, Dubiel didn’t even know Berra’s last name, and no one believed he was a ball player. The trainer wouldn’t give Berra a locker, telling him to hang his street clothes on a nail, and Selkirk demanded to see the telegram telling him to report to the Bears. Even after Berra produced it, Selkirk refused to allow him to take batting practice. When the Bears returned to Newark, Selkirk took Berra out to the field to see if he could hit. “We had a night game that night and I went out there at five o’clock,” Brown is quoted as saying in More Tales from the Yankee Dugout: “Selkirk was sitting there in the clubhouse kind of staring off into space. I said, ‘George, how did Yogi do?’ He said, ‘He hit them over the light towers.’ That’s when he started playing and he never sat down again.”Ed Randall, More Tales from the Yankee Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Yankee Stories Ever Told! (Champaign, IL, Sports Publishing LLC, 2003): 18-19

45 United Press, “Dubiel Sold,” the Long Branch (N.J.) Daily Record, December 16, 1946: 11. Dubiel was “purchased outright for an undisclosed sum.”

46 United Press, “Red Sox Draft Ostrowski; Majors Get Five Coasters,” the Los Angeles Daily News, November 10, 1947: 10. The first pick was 30-year-old left-handed pitcher Al Gerheauser of the Montreal Royals, who went to the St. Louis Browns.

47 New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Phillies, May 15, 1948.

48 St. Louis Cardinals vs. Philadelphia Phillies, May 24, 1948. Dubiel allowed two runs on three hits and a walk in nine innings in the 6-2 complete game victory; at the plate, he was 2-for-3 with two runs scored.

49 Philadelphia Phillies vs. Brooklyn Dodgers, April 24, 1948.

50 Philadelphia Phillies vs. New York Giants, May 29, 1948.

51 Stan Baumgartner, “Star-Maker Sawyer Moves Up to Phils,” The Sporting News, August 4, 1948: 5.

52 Stan Baumgartner, “Putsey Caballero Magician in Field with Tiny Mitts,” The Sporting News, August 28, 1948: 7. In five starts and 12 relief appearances under Sawyer, Dubiel was 4-4 with a 3.23 ERA in 55 2/3 innings, compared to 4-6 with a 4.28 ERA in 12 starts and eight relief appearances under Chapman and Cooke.

53 Stan Baumgartner, “Sawyer Keeps Busy on Book of Phils’ Faults,” The Sporting News, September 1, 1948: 12. A game recap on page 16 of that same issue reported the gift of the silver service set, and that day’s “Major League Flashes” column that began on page 17 and concluded on page 30 noted the participation of McGinley.

54 “Carpenter Landed Players, B.R.’s Tasty Sandwiches,” The Sporting News, November 21, 1956: 3. Eight years after the trade, Carpenter reveled in the memory of acquiring Waitkus: “Owner Bob Carpenter of the Phillies still talks about the most delicious plate of sandwiches he ever ate. It wasn’t just the sandwiches, although they were mighty tasty. But they were never intended for him in the first place. Neither was the ball player he picked up, who helped bring him a pennant.”

55 Ed Burns, “Cubs and White Sox Swap Shops Keep Up Their Brisk Turnover,” The Sporting News, December 22, 1948: 16. Six months after the trade, on June 14, 1949, Waitkus was shot in a Chicago hotel room as the Phillies were in town for a series against the Cubs by Ruth Ann Steinhagen, an obsessed fan. He survived and returned to baseball the following season. The shooting may have influenced author Bernard Malamud, who three years later published The Natural.

56 Edgar Munzel, “Leonard to Take His Knuckler to Bullpen,” The Sporting News, April 12, 1950.

57 Edgar Munzel, “Frisch in Trouble? He Has But 21 Men,” The Sporting News, August 31, 1949: 19.

58 Tom Pardo, “July 6 1949: Walker Cooper’s career day powers Reds over hapless Cubs.”

59 Chicago Cubs vs. Cincinnati Reds, July 6, 1949.

60 “Scorer Charges Hacker with Loss of 23-4 Game,” The Sporting News, July 20, 1949: 16. “Swope decided that, since Dubiel had done practically nothing to bring on his team’s 23 to 4 defeat and had been forced out by an injury instead of by a knockout, he should not be charged with the defeat and ruled that Hacker was the losing pitcher.”

61 Chicago Cubs vs. Philadelphia Phillies, July 26, 1950. Dubiel took the complete game loss, allowing six runs (all earned) on five hits and six walks in eight innings.

62 Associated Press, “Frisch Gets Booed in Leaving Dubiel,” the Corvalis (Oregon) Gazette-Times, July 27, 1950: 9. “Frisch answered the jockeys who booed and howled him because he didn’t take Dubiel out for a pinch hitter. Frisch said he permitted Dubiel to work out of his own jam so that Frisch could find out ‘if Cubs’ pitchers have to have a lantern on the plate to find out where it is located.’” Dubiel’s six walks in the inning were one shy of the National League record, held by three pitchers – most recently Bob Ewing of the Cincinnati Reds in 1902.

63 “Obituary of Walter Dubiel”, The Sporting News, November 8, 1969: 46.

64 “Obituary of Walter Dubiel”

65 John Barrington, “Along the Sports Trail,” International News Service. Published in the Tipton (Indiana) Daily Tribune, September 18, 1950: 4.

66 Edgar Munzel, “Ill Luck Still Trails Dubiel; Jaw Broken by Line Drive,” The Sporting News, March 19, 1952: 13.

67 Philadelphia Phillies vs. Chicago Cubs, April 29, 1952.

68 “Eastern League,” The Sporting News, August 1, 1964: 33.

69 Bill Lee, The Baseball Necrology: The Post-Baseball Lives and Deaths of More Than 7,600 Major League Players and Others (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), page 111.

70 “Mrs. Walter Dubiel,” the Hartford Courant, July 6, 1968: 6. Dubiel’s baseball-focused obituary in The Sporting News did not list survivors.

71 “Obituary of Walter Dubiel” This obituary gave the date of his death as October 25, but other sources – including an Associated Press story printed on October 25 in many newspapers, for example on page 19 of the Ottawa Journal, gave the October 23 date. Baseball-Reference.com uses October 23 as well.