Lefty O’Doul

Lefty O’Doul had a meteoric career as a big league ballplayer but his contributions to baseball continued for a lifetime. He pitched four seasons in the American League but anyone who blinked might not have noticed. He made only 34 appearances in that time, barely one per month.

His most noteworthy pitching achievement—if you can call it that—was when he faced 16 Cleveland Indians batters and gave up 13 runs in a single inning in 1923. No pitcher in this century has had a worse inning.

O’Doul was also in and out of the National League in a flash. During seven seasons as an outfielder, he again left behind in his vapor trail records that may never be broken. These, though, were records others would envy. His .398 average in 1929 is the highest in this century by a National League outfielder. His 254 base hits are an NL record. And he became the only player in history to hit more than 30 home runs and strike out fewer than 20 times in the same season, with 32 homers and 19 strikeouts.

In 1930 O’Doul batted .383 and two years after that hit .368 to win his second National League batting title. By 1935 he was gone. His .349 lifetime average is the fourth highest of all time but is not listed among baseball’s career records. O’Doul played only 970 games, 30 fewer than required to qualify.

Impressive as they are, O’Doul’s accomplishments as a player rank only as footnotes to his long and distinguished career as a minor league manager, batting instructor, good will ambassador for baseball and diplomat.

O’Doul was happy to return home to San Francisco, even though he’d batted .316 in 1934, his final big league season. He had signed on as player-manager of his hometown Seals of the Pacific Coast League. He managed the club for the next 17 years.

At least one of his players graduated to the major leagues every season, even though the Seals were an independent organization, a farm team for no one.

O’Doul spent an additional six seasons managing four other Coast League teams. He turned down numerous offers to manage in the major leagues because of his love for the West Coast, and for San Francisco in particular.

He and Rogers Hornsby were widely recognized as the premier batting instructors of their day. One of O’Doul’s first pupils was Joe DiMaggio in 1935, when both were with the Seals. DiMaggio improved his average 57 points from the previous season, although O’Doul refused to take credit.

“Nobody taught Joe DiMaggio to hit,” he said. “I was just smart enough to leave him alone. He didn’t need my help, believe me.”

DiMaggio knew otherwise. He continued to seek O’Doul’s advice, even after achieving stardom with the Yankees.

Dom DiMaggio, Joe’s little brother, also played for O’Doul in San Francisco. He claimed he wouldn’t have reached the major leagues without O’Doul’s help. “He was far and away the finest batting instructor that ever put on a baseball uniform,” he said.

Another of O’Doul’s pupils in San Francisco was Ferris Fain, who later won two American League batting titles. “I learned it all from him,” he said of O’Doul. “I was lucky to have received my apprenticeship from him.”

Ted Williams also sought O’Doul’s advice, while a rookie with the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. O’Doul told him: “You just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t let anyone change you.”

O’Doul didn’t confine his teaching to players in the Coast League. Even before retiring as a major league player, he spent much of his offseason time teaching San Francisco youngsters how to play ball. He was an icon in their eyes.

He gave them bats and balls by the dozen. sometimes even between innings of Seals games. To stop that practice, the club made an agreement with Lefty to sponsor an annual O’Doul Kids Day, letting thousands of youngsters into the game free, and giving them balls and miniature O’Doul bats.

O’Doul never turned down requests for his autograph. Once, two boys approached his table in a restaurant. “Mr. O’Doul, we’re sorry to ask while you’re eating, but would you give us your autograph?” Lefty’s reply: “Boys, I would have been very upset if you hadn’t asked.”

He sponsored youth teams all the way from Brooklyn to Vancouver at various times during his career as a player and manager.

When it came to popularizing baseball, though, O’Doul’s most significant efforts were in Japan. San Francisco sportswriters called him “The Father of Baseball in Japan” because of the major role he played in starting professional baseball there.

O’Doul made more than 2O trips to Japan, sometimes at his own expense. He first went as a player with an all-star team in 1931, but most of his visits were as a teacher and coach. He was as revered by Japanese children as by their American counterparts.

Baseball became so popular in Japan that play continued without interruption through most of World War II, even though it was the national pastime of the enemy.

American ballplayers and all-star teams were banned from visiting Japan from 1937 until after the war. O’Doul was one of the first to go back, in 1946, laying groundwork for the resumption of relations between Japanese and American ballplayers.

The greatest achievement of O’Doul’s long life in baseball may have been leading his San Francisco Seals on a six-week tour of Japan in 1949. The country was still mired in postwar depression, and diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan were ice cold. In just 40-odd days, O’Doul and the Seals managed to restore the nation’s morale, break the postwar tension in Japanese-American relations, and lay a new foundation of friendship between the two countries.

General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. occupation forces in Japan, was astounded at the impact O’Doul had made. “All the diplomats together would not have been able to do that,” he said. “This is the greatest piece of diplomacy ever.”