Born in Norcatur (population approximately 500) in rural Kansas on September 21, 1910, Elden was an only child. Surrounded by farms sprawled over the prairie, downtown Norcatur was just two blocks long. The town’s only saloon shut down during Prohibition and never reopened. By the time he was six weeks old everyone in town knew Elden. His father, Fred, was the town’s only postman, and his mother took him along on his father’s route and introduced Elden to all the postal patrons. Initially Fred delivered the mail on horseback, but before Elden was born he was using a motorcycle in the more temperate months and a horse-drawn wagon in the harsh winter. The family income was supplemented by marketing milk and eggs. Elden’s mother was in charge of this effort. His first job was to deliver these products in his red express wagon. At an early age Elden had instilled in him by his parents a respect for the value of money.

Norcatur High School didn’t have a baseball team, so beginning at age 15, Auker played on the town team with the men. After graduating from high school in 1928, he attended Kansas Agricultural and Mechanical College (today Kansas State) in Manhattan, Kansas. Charlie Corseau, who recruited him, was the varsity basketball and baseball coach there, and arranged part-time jobs for Elden so he could pay his way. Auker’s goal was to become a medical doctor and he took the appropriate courses in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, psychology, etc., to prepare for that profession.

While in college, Auker played varsity football (quarterback), baseball (pitcher), and basketball (guard and team captain). He was voted All Big Six in all three sports. This resulted in a college nickname: Big Six. But in his autobiography, Auker wrote that no one in major-league baseball ever called him that. 

Football was his favorite sport. Ironically, in his first college football game, Auker permanently injured his right shoulder. This prevented him from ever throwing overhand. To compensate for the shoulder separation, he learned to pitch with a slightly underhand motion. 

Auker always took on extra jobs to earn money, which was in short supply in the 1930s. In the summer of 1931 he pitched for pay on a town team, the Manhattan Travelers, and faced Satchel Paige, who was pitching for the legendary Kansas City Monarchs. Auker beat Paige, 2-1, the Monarchs’ only run coming on a home run by catcher T.J. Young. This loss broke the Monarchs’ 33-game winning streak. Later that summer Auker played for another town team in Oxford, Nebraska, but under the name Eddie Leroy to preserve his college eligibility. Once more his team faced Kansas City, but this time a pitcher named Andy Cooper was on the mound for the Monarchs. Auker threw a shutout, winning 1-0. Auker thought Cooper had a sharper curveball than Paige, and was at least as good a pitcher as Paige, if not better.

After graduation in 1932, Auker was scouted by football great Bronko Nagurski and turned down an offer of $6,000 from the Chicago Bears to play pro football. Instead he signed with the Detroit Tigers for $450. He decided to play baseball because he would start getting his paychecks instead of waiting until the fall, when the football season started. Auker’s intention was to play pro baseball as a means of earning tuition money for medical school. But he made such good money at baseball that he couldn’t afford to give it up. Besides, the Depression was in full force and both jobs and money were scarce.

At one of his first minor-league stops, Decatur of the Three-I League in 1932, Auker’s manager was Bob Coleman, who had caught perhaps the most famous submarine pitcher to ever work in the majors, Carl Mays. Coleman suggested that Auker modify his slightly underhand throwing motion even more, and throw directly underhand. Before the 1933 season ended, Auker, who was 16-10 with Beaumont of the Texas League, was called up to “The Show” by the Detroit Tigers. He started six games and relieved in nine others, going 3-3 overall. He pitched a total of 55 innings.

Also in 1933, Elden married Mildred Purcell, a college classmate. In their senior year Elden was voted “Joe College,” and Mildred “Betty Coed.” Although they knew each other in college they didn’t date until after graduation. Their only child, a son, James, was born in 1939. Their marriage was better than any Hollywood love story and Elden and Mildred were devoted to each other for their entire lives.

After the 1933 season, Mickey Cochrane replaced Bucky Harris as the Tigers’ skipper. Cochrane was a dynamic playing manager who infused a winning spirit in the club by constantly exhorting his players to do better. The talent was there, and the club responded. The Tigers had an outstanding pitching staff, led by Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe and Tommy Bridges (24-8 and 22-11, respectively), and ably supported by Auker’s fine 15-7 season, along with another 15 wins from Fred (Firpo) Marberry. The Bengals coasted to victory with a record of 101-53, seven games ahead of the aging Yankees. 

The ’34 Tigers were a powerhouse team and boasted an infield that combined to drive in an astonishing total of 462 runs. Four members of the team would be elected to the Hall of Fame: Cochrane, Charlie Gehringer, Goose Goslin, and Hank Greenberg.

In the National League, the St. Louis Cardinals won their fourth pennant since 1926 —behind four different managers. The latest version of the Cards, known as the Gas House Gang, was led by another playing manager, Frankie Frisch. The Cardinals’ roster included five players destined for the Hall of Fame —Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Frisch, Joe Medwick, and Dazzy Vance. They had a 95-58 record and the ’34 season would be their finest moment, as the fabled Gas House Gang never won another pennant. 

The 1934 Series opened in Detroit, and the Cardinals took the opener, 8-3, with Dizzy Dean besting Alvin “General” Crowder. In the second game Schoolboy Rowe went all the way as the Tigers scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to pull out a 3-2 victory. Bill Walker took the loss for the Cards.

The Series shifted to St. Louis, where the Cardinals won the third game, 4-1. Paul Dean beat Tommy Bridges, who was knocked out in the fifth inning after facing three hitters without retiring anyone.

The Cardinals now led two games to one and the Tigers needed a win. Auker was matched against Tex Carleton in the fourth game. Elden pitched a complete game as Bill Walker again took the loss in relief. Auker gave up 10 hits and three earned runs in a 10-4 Tigers victory.

At the end of six games the Series was dead even. Auker started the crucial Game Seven at home, opposing Dizzy Dean. Auker pitched well enough for the first two innings, allowing three hits, but Dizzy Dean kept the Tigers from scoring, too. After Auker got the first out in the top of the third, Dean doubled to left. Pepper Martin then beat out a slow roller to first, giving the Cardinals runners on first and third. Martin promptly stole second, and outfielder Jack Rothrock walked, loading the bases. The next batter was the switch-hitting Frisch. He fouled off four pitches and then doubled to right field, clearing the bases. 

Cochrane removed Auker in favor of Rowe, who got Medwick to ground out to short, with Frisch taking third. St. Louis kept hitting, though, and by the time the inning was over, the Cardinals had scored seven runs. It was quite a game, and Tigers fans displayed their frustration after Joe Medwick and Tigers third baseman Marvin Owen tangled in a fight on the field. The crowd pelted Medwick with bottles, food, and all sorts of trash as soon as he took his position in left field. The mob was in such an uproar that the game had to be halted. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis ordered that Medwick be removed from the game “for his own safety.” The final score was 11-0, bringing the championship home to St. Louis.

Auker got some measure of revenge by winning the first major-league baseball players’ winter golf tournament in Lakeland, Florida, in January 1935, defeating Dizzy Dean and Babe Ruth, among others. 

The Tigers picked up in 1935 right where they left off in ’34, winning the AL pennant with a record of 93-58. The team was largely unchanged, but General Crowder, at 16-10, improved greatly over his 1934 season (he was a combined 9-11 with Washington and Detroit). Auker was also better, at 18-7, and led the league with a winning percentage of .720. It was his best season ever. In the World Series the Tigers faced the Chicago Cubs, who had compiled a record of 100-54 under Charlie Grimm. 

With the Series tied at one game each, Auker started Game Three in Chicago against Bill Lee. Auker gave up a solo home run to Frank Demaree in the second, in addition to a scratch run. The Cubs squeaked out another run in the fifth, and the Tigers got on board in the sixth on a Pete Fox triple that scored Goslin. The top of the seventh started with Marvin Owen flying out to right field. When utility infielder Flea Clifton walked, manager Cochrane saw a chance to ignite a rally and sent Gee Walker up to bat for Auker. Walker promptly hit into a double play, ending the rally and the inning. But in the eighth, the Tigers scored four runs, getting Auker off the hook. They won the game by a score of 6-5. It was Auker’s only appearance in the 1935 Series. The joy in Detroit knew no bounds when the Tigers went on to win their first-ever world championship. But that powerhouse Detroit team was not able to win another pennant until 1940. By then Auker was no longer part of the team. 

Auker’s years in Detroit were happy ones. It was a close-knit team and produced lifelong friendships. But the idyllic situation came to an abrupt end after the 1938 season, when Auker was traded, along with reserve outfielder Chet Morgan and pitcher Jack Wade, to the Boston Red Sox for third baseman Mike Higgins and pitcher Archie McKain. Detroit felt this trade was necessary because Marv Owen was in poor health and ready to retire. Over his five-plus seasons with Detroit, Auker started 136 games and completed 70 of them, compiling a record of 77 wins and 52 losses.

In Boston, according to Auker, manager-shortstop Joe Cronin called each pitch for all his pitchers except Lefty Grove. Auker didn’t learn of this until well into the season. He complained bitterly about not being allowed to pitch as he thought best, but to no avail. Auker dealt with this situation by disregarding the catcher’s signals. Cronin responded to this rebellious act by temporarily taking Auker out of the pitching rotation. Auker’s performance suffered in 1939 as he lost 10 games while winning 9. He completed only six of the 25 games he started.

On the bright side of this unhappy year, Auker became lifelong friends with Ted Williams. They truly loved each other. Years later, at events hosted by the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame in Citrus Hills, Florida, Williams and Auker would discuss the fine points of hitting and pitching. Whenever they disagreed on some particular, Ted would look Elden right in the eye and bellow out, “Goddammit Elden, pitchers are dumb, dumb, dumb.” Elden didn’t take this personally, as it was Ted’s universal judgment of all pitchers.

Auker roomed with Jimmie Foxx while on the road in 1939, and came to respect and admire Double-X so much that he named his only child James Emory in his honor. Fortunately, the child was a boy.

At the end of the 1939 season, Auker told Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey he couldn’t play for Cronin and would retire if Yawkey didn’t trade him. After being assured by St. Louis Browns manager Fred Haney that Auker could call his own game, Yawkey sold the pitcher to St. Louis for $30,000.

The Browns simply didn’t compare with either the Tigers or the Red Sox. They were not contenders, and finished a dismal sixth in 1940 and 1941. Luke Sewell took over as manager in 1942 and the Brownies rose to third place, winning 82 games. Auker won 14 of those games and earned a substantial salary. World War II was now raging, and Auker felt he had to devote full time to what up until then had been his offseason job.

Auker realized that his career as a ballplayer wasn’t going to last forever. In 1938 he began to prepare himself for life after baseball. He and Mildred stayed in Detroit that winter instead of going to Florida to chase a little white ball around the golf links. A Detroit friend, Jim Jackson, offered him a job at his small firm, the Midwest Abrasive Company. Auker learned the abrasive industry from the ground up by working in all departments. The next year he moved into the sales department, and then learned how the abrasive was employed in the honing process that removed all the microscopic rough spots from the interior of 20mm and 40mm anti-aircraft gun barrels —a critical step in fabricating accurate gun barrels. By the end of 1942, Auker was a vital link in the production of defensive armaments for the Navy and he believed his country needed him more than baseball. Although offered a lucrative contract by St. Louis, he decided not to return for the 1943 season. He was 32 years old, and was fully aware that by the time the war ended he would be too old to resume his career on the diamond.

Abandoning baseball and committing himself to the war effort was a noble, patriotic decision. It was also a very expensive one, as his annual income was greatly reduced. Ultimately, Auker was rewarded; by the time he retired in 1975, he had risen to be president of what was then the industry’s second largest firm, and was very well off financially.

As Auker rose up the executive ladder, he and Mildred were obliged to relocate to Massachusetts. There, in addition to his corporate responsibilities, Auker became the vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, and president and chairman of the board of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a manufacturers’ trade group. In this role he met Joseph Kennedy (father of the president), Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater, played golf with Gerald Ford and Tip O’Neill, and interacted with numerous other important people.

Immediately after his retirement in 1975, Auker was hired by Dresser Industries, the parent company of the division from which he had retired, as a consultant to evaluate its Washington office. He and Mildred had just purchased a home in Vero Beach, Florida, but Auker accepted the offer and commuted by air each weekend to Florida for a year. 

Auker and Mildred became full-time residents of Vero Beach when he completed the consulting agreement in 1977. In his 80s, he joined the Society for American Baseball Research in 1997 and attended every meeting of the Central Florida Chapter. Andy Seminick, a resident of Cocoa, Florida, also became a chapter member. In 1998 the chapter was renamed the Auker-Seminick (alphabetical order) Chapter in their honor. The chapter celebrated Elden’s 90th birthday in 2000 and hosted a party for him. When asked how he spent his time, he replied that he played golf two or three times a week. Naturally, someone asked him about his score. With a smile Elden softly said that it was less than his age.

Typically, a chapter meeting centered on one of the members making a presentation of their latest research findings. Then the meeting took the form of an open discussion. Both Auker and Seminick freely participated and candidly shared their baseball experiences. Elden’s tales from the diamond were enthralling, as was his entire life story. Just possibly the experience of talking about his career, and the enthusiastic reception to it, led him to write his autobiography, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms.

In his book, Auker made it quite clear that he didn’t put up with cheaters, or rule violators like Pete Rose. Although Elden was a soft-spoken and gentle man, it was evident that he was made of iron when it came to his moral code.

It was also clear that he thought current pitchers were not up to the physical standards of his day. Typically, Auker reported, the day after pitching a game he would do some easy throwing and a lot of hard running in the outfield. The following day he would throw batting practice from the mound. And Auker threw hard stuff, no creampuffs or meatballs. He worked to improve the command of his pitches, and didn’t care to be hit hard by his teammates. A teammate had to earn a solid hit, even if it was just BP. After throwing batting practice, Auker would do more hard running in the outfield. He religiously ran hard every day. He was convinced that a pitcher’s strength came from his legs. Simply doing wind sprints didn’t improve leg strength and Auker was an advocate of running as hard as possible. 

The major change Auker observed in pitching technique had to do with brushing back a hitter. He said emphatically, “The plate is mine. If a batter gets into my territory I’m going to make him eat dirt.”1 Auker said he never threw to hurt a hitter, but plunking him in the ribs to back him off the plate was acceptable. In Auker’s opinion, the rule change that prevented a pitcher from doing this tipped the balance sharply in the hitter’s favor.

When Tiger Stadium was “retired” at the end of the 1999 season, Auker participated in the solemn ceremony. As the senior Tiger in attendance he stood at the head of a line of 60 Tigers players, arranged in order of seniority, anchored at the other end by the current team captain, catcher Brad Ausmus. Auker’s remarks over the public address system clearly indicated that in his heart and mind he was still a Tiger. The flag was lowered, folded, and passed from the center-field flagpole from one player to the next until it reached home plate. It was then put into storage until Opening Day of the 2000 season, when the process of passing the flag from home plate out to the center-field flagpole was repeated by the same players at the new home of the Tigers, Comerica Park. Elden’s son, James, arranged to get a copy of the video and Elden showed it at the next meeting of SABR.

Another honor came to Auker on May 27, 2000. His home town of Norcatur dedicated a park in his name. The land was donated by Jim Nelson, a boyhood buddy of Elden’s. It was a very emotional moment for Elden and Mildred, as the entire town turned out for the ceremony, highlighted by a band playing the national anthem as the flag was raised.

Elden had a long history of heart problems —he was on his third pacemaker —and on August 4, 2006, he died from heart failure. A memorial service celebrating his life was held at the First United Methodist Church of Vero Beach. It was attended by a huge throng of relatives, friends, business associates, and fellow SABR members. His son, James, and two grandsons eulogized Elden. Their tender, loving words moved the audience greatly. Immediately following the service his family hosted a reception in the Christian Life Center Fellowship Hall.

Sources

Auker, Elden, with Tom Keegan, Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2001). 

Bucek, Jeanine, ed., The Baseball Encyclopedia.  Tenth Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1996).

Cohen, Richard M., and David S. Neft, The World Series  (New York: Dial Press, 1979).

Levenson, Barry,  The Seventh Game (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004).

Schaefer, Robert,  personal notes taken at meetings of the Auker-Seminick
SABR Chapter, 1996-2006.

Van Brimmer, Kevin, “Auker was ‘Treasure to Game, Humanity.’ ” TC Palm (Obituary), August 5, 2006.

Notes

1 Author’s conversation with Elden Auker at a SABR Regional (Central Florida) Chapter Meeting, 1997.

James Charles Jacob Bagby Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 8, 1916, while his father was pitching with the Indians. Jim spent much of his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father had settled after playing with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association. Eventually the family re-located to the prosperous Atlanta suburb of Marietta, where both father and son resided until their deaths. The family was small but close. There were three children, Jim and his older sisters, Betty and Mabel, who was named after her mother, the former Mabel Smith. The bond between father and son was especially close.

As a child, Jim Jr. avidly followed his father’s career and spent a lot of time at Ponce de Leon Park, home field for the Crackers, starting when his father played there. When not watching his father play, Jim spent many hours playing catch with his dad. It wasn’t long before the younger Bagby learned all of his father’s pitches. Jim’s mother disapproved. Her thoughts, echoing those of so many baseball wives of the generation, were highlighted in a Liberty magazine profile that quoted her talking to her husband:

The conversation was repeated many times. Often enough to impress Jim Bagby Jr., young as he was. “I don’t know why you want him to grow up to be a baseball player,” his mother would say. “What has baseball ever done for you, Jim? You worked hard in the minor leagues for years, and then you were in the majors for a spell, and here you are in the minors again. After all those years what do you have to show for it? First I want our boy to have a good education, and then a job in some reliable business.”

The talk would die down, and then, when his mother had left the room, his father would ask, “Ready, Jim?” And Jim would nod eagerly and the two would go out behind the little house in Atlanta and play ball.¹

Young Bagby’s course to the majors was not a straight line from childhood to adulthood. There came a time in his adolescence when he came close to giving up on baseball completely. As a 12-year-old he was the best pitcher on the Atlanta area sandlots but then mysteriously, Liberty recounts, his arm “went lame.” His mother’s emotions were mixed but young Jim felt that she was secretly glad of the situation.

For three years Jim didn’t touch a baseball. Things changed when he turned 15. Starting slowly, he ultimately rediscovered his old form. The team he played on tied for the city of Atlanta championship game but lost the playoff. The re-emergence of his son’s talent elated his father. The elder Bagby knew the owner of a semipro team in Montgomery, Georgia. Beginning in 1932, the son pitched semipro ball in Montgomery and was winning consistently.

In the spring of 1935 the senior Bagby finagled a tryout for his son with Cincinnati. Amid the hubbub of Chuck Dressen’s first full season as manager of the Reds, the gangly 18-year-old attracted almost no attention. Embittered, he left the Reds spring training camp on his own volition after three disheartening weeks. A pep talk from his father soon revived his spirits. When the Boston Red Sox played in Atlanta as they barnstormed their way north to open the season, the father tried something else.

Gaining the ear of Red Sox manager Joe Cronin, he arranged another tryout for Jim. Cronin liked what he saw and wired Eddie Collins to find a position for the 6-foot-2, 175-pound pitcher with great stuff and a solid assortment of pitches. As a result Jim found himself in the ranks of professional baseball as a member of Boston’s Piedmont League farm club, the Charlotte Hornets.

With the Class B Hornets he compiled a 13-9 record while appearing in 40 games and pitching 218 innings. Showing a maturity beyond his years on the mound, Bagby possessed a wicked curve, a fantastic changeup taught to him by his father, a sinker, and his main weapon, blinding speed. In 1936, Charlotte dropped out of the Piedmont League and the Red Sox switched their affiliation to the new team in Rocky Mount. Bagby was assigned there.

But Rocky Mount was a bit of a setback; Bagby compiled a 9-12 record while pitching 169 innings in 38 games with an ERA of 5.11. Despite the mediocre season, Jim was promoted to the 1937 Single-A Hazelton (Pennsylvania) Red Sox (New York-Pennsylvania League), where his talents emerged. He went 21-8 in 37 games (his 21 victories led the league) with a stellar ERA of 2.71 to earn not just league MVP honors but also a promotion to the majors.

Jim made his debut in a way that every kid in America dreams about. He started on Opening Day, April 18, 1938, against the world champion New York Yankees, the most potent lineup in baseball. When he arrived at Fenway, Jim had no idea he would be on the mound to kick off the season. In what was also the first major-league game he had ever seen, Jim found himself inserted as the starter by Joe Cronin. Cronin made the conscious decision to not tell Bagby sooner because he did not want the 21-year-old to mentally “pitch himself out” with distraction.² Bagby pitched six innings and earned the win. The game was tied, 4-4, when he was lifted for a pinch-hitter and the Sox rallied to take an 8-4 lead. The lead held up and Jim Bagby, Jr. had the first of his 97 major-league victories.

Jim compiled a 15-11 record in 43 games, 25 as a starter. He had 10 complete games but achieved only one shutout that season, a tight 2-0 home win over the visiting Philadelphia Athletics on August 18. His ERA stood at 4.21 with 73 strikeouts – but 90 walks. He surrendered 218 hits and 110 runs. It was a fairly decent start for what became a successful career.

Once he made the majors, Jim and his father only argued about one issue: who was the better hitter. Both were good hitting pitchers, and Jr. actually was used as an occasional pinch hitter. His lifetime average of .226 was eight points higher than his father’s. The two were profiled in The Sporting News, the article ended thus: “But Junior is certain of one thing: that he can outhit the old man. The old man will grant him only one thing—that he probably gets more distance. ‘But look what he’s got to hit?’ says Pop, ‘Who couldn’t knock the rabbit ball a country mile?’”³

For Jim another life adventure began in the off season. On October 13, 1938, he married 21-year-old Leola Hicks in the pastor’s office of the Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta. The two had met two years previously at a local basketball game. In a small, simple ceremony, Jim’s sister, Mabel – herself married for only a short time — served as the matron of honor. The marriage would last the rest of his life.

Perhaps he had played over his head in 1938, perhaps he was distracted by the responsibilities of being a new husband, but whatever the reason, Bagby came out flat in the 1939 season. He amassed a 5-5 record with an ERA of 7.09. In mid-season the Red Sox decided that he needed to be sent down to the minors to get his game back, so he was sent to the Little Rock Travelers of the Southern Association. The Southern Association was Class A1, just a notch above his most recent minor-league assignment, in Hazelton.

The demotion had exactly the effect the parent club desired. Bagby pitched to a 7-6 record and a 3.54 ERA with Little Rock. Whatever the Red Sox were looking for in him, Jim found it. He was back in the majors to stay in 1940, although at first it didn’t look that way. His 1940 numbers were nothing to get excited about: a 10-16 record in 36 games. His ERA of 4.73 was a tad high, although he began to work relief on a regular basis. The combination was good enough to keep Bagby in a Sox uniform.

On August 24, he found himself involved in perhaps the oddest moment of Ted Williams’ long career in Boston. Although Ted was to say, “The only thing dumber than a pitcher is two pitchers”. Ted had been pestering Joe Cronin to let him pitch. Ted liked to brag about his youthful pitching exploits and when the first game of a doubleheader against the Tigers turned into a 11-1 blowout, Cronin decided that it was time for Ted to put up or shut up.

Jim Bagby, who was on the mound, was moved to left field and Ted came in to pitch the final two innings. Ted faced nine batters, allowing three hits and one run. The highlight was striking out Rudy York on three pitches. Interestingly, the catcher was Joe Glenn, who had also caught Babe Ruth’s last major league pitching performance.   

Jim stayed in a Red Sox uniform until December. The one thing the Sox lacked in 1940 was a quality catcher; at the league winter meetings, Joe Cronin, at the behest of Eddie Collins, rectified that problem. In a complicated deal to get Frankie Pytlak from Cleveland, Cronin “sold pitchers Fritz Ostermueller and Denny Galehouse to the St. Louis Browns for $30,000. Purchased Pete Fox from Detroit for an unannounced sum. Swapped Roger “Doc”Cramer, his veteran outfielder, to Washington for Gerald “Gee” Walker, and immediately turned over Walker, pitcher Jim Bagby and catcher Gene Desautels to Cleveland, receiving in return Pytlak, pitcher Joe Dobson, and infielder Odell Hale.”⁴

The deal was initially unpopular in Cleveland, as Pytlak was a fan favorite and the Indians seemed to get the worst of the deal. Bagby was perceived in Cleveland as a mediocre pitcher at best. It turned out that the Lake Erie air would eventually turn out to be just the tonic Jim needed.

The deal was, however, considered shrewd by most of the experts. The Sporting News ranked the Indians’ rotation of Bob Feller, Al Smith, Al Milnar, Bagby, and Mel Harder as “best in [the] loop.”⁵ Bagby’s season was not spectacular by any standard, but he did find a home with Cleveland. With the Tribe, Jim started 27 games but finished only 12; he won nine games while losing 15. His ERA was a pedestrian 4.04, but was an improvement over 1940. Interestingly, the same man who signed his father’s checks when he was with the Indians signed Jim’s as well. Indians bookkeeper Mark Wanstall had been with the club for 25 years. The Sporting News observed, “It happens only once in a lifetime, and can certainly occur only once in the history of major league ball in Cleveland.”⁶

Cleveland also offered some important off-field impact on his life. No doubt aware of his mother’s fears of a baseball career being an economic dead end, Jim enrolled in art school. Jim took morning classes at a Cleveland school; his long term goal was that of becoming a professional artist.  

The highlight of his 1941 season would ensure that his name would live forever, if only as the answer to a trivia question. It is almost impossible to convey the atmosphere and the national mania that was singularly focused on July 17, 1941. For the previous 56 games, Joe DiMaggio had hit safely at least once. The streak was the centerpiece of the nation’s newscasts; it was followed breathlessly by newspapers and fans to the exclusion of all else. Attendance for Yankees games both at home and on the road soared. Some 67,000 fans turned out at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium that night to see if “Joltin’ Joe” could extend the streak.

Cleveland starter Al Smith pitched the first 7 1/3 innings. He walked Joe once, and also got some exceptional help from third baseman Ken Keltner, who made two stellar grabs to retire DiMaggio in the first and seventh innings.  Bagby came in with one out in the eighth inning. For years afterwards he would tell all who asked what he pitched that night. Most reporters over the years usually asked about that night in 1941 when the country watched him end DiMaggio’s streak. Jim loved to tell and retell the story. “Just fastballs”, Bagby said when asked about pitch selection by interviewer John Holway. Bagby continued, “Joe hit one of them hard but he just hit it at somebody.”⁷ DiMaggio hit into a 6-4-3 double play, Boudreau to Mack to Grimes, which just beat Joe to the bag. Ultimately the Yankees won the game, 4-3, but that was distinctly an anticlimax for the evening.

Jim achieved some professional highlights in 1942 and 1943. In both years he led the American League in games started. In 1942 he compiled a 17-9 record in 38 games. The 1942 season was Jim’s single greatest season. He started 35 games and recorded 16 complete games with 4 shutouts, both professional bests. His outstanding ERA of 2.96 was also his personal best. Jim was a natural selection for that July’s All-Star Game. In 1943 he returned to the All-Star Game but in neither year did he see action. His 1943 numbers were 17-14 in 36 games while leading the league in innings pitched with 273. His ERA of 3.10 however, was closer to his final major league average of 3.96. (His father led the American League twice in games, and once each in victories, complete games, and innings pitched.) 

In 1944 Jim appeared in just 13 games before leaving baseball for a one-year stint in the Merchant Marine. His hitch was uneventful and perhaps left Jim with a desire for more. Early in 1945 Jim took the Army physical but was rated 4-F because of his harelip. He returned to the Indians for the final year of World War II and had an 8-11 record. He started 19 games and worked 6 in relief. On December 12, 1945, the fifth anniversary of the trade from Boston, he was traded back to Boston for pitcher Vic Johnson and cash.⁸

With Boston he was used almost equally as a starter and as a reliever. Bagby built a 7-6 record, he started 11 games and completed six with one shutout. He also relieved in 10 games. The highlight of his career came in October when the Red Sox went to the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. In Game Four, after Tex Hughson surrendered three runs in the second inning and two more in the third inning without recording an out, Bagby was called upon to face Enos Slaughter with Stan Musial stationed at second base. Bagby got Slaughter to ground out and Whitey Kurowski to foul out before Joe Garagiola singled to drive in Musial. Bagby struck out Harry Walker to end the uprising. In three full innings of work, Jim gave up one earned run on six hits and a walk. Jim flied out to center field in his one Series at-bat, falling short of his father’s 1920 feat: a pitcher hitting a home run in a World Series. Jim, Sr. was the first pitcher to homer in the fall classic.

On February 10, 1947 the Pirates bought Bagby from the Red Sox for slightly over the $10,000 waiver price.⁹ It turned out to be his last big-league season. In another parallel with his father, the Pirates were the last major-league team for both Bagbys. With the Buccos, his record was 5-4 in 37 games with an ERA of 4.67. He started six games and finished two of them, as he was used almost exclusively in relief.

His big-league career was almost the same length as that of his father. “Sarge” played nine years, while his son hung on for one more year, making an even decade in the bigs. The 1948 season found Jim in the Triple A American Association with the Indianapolis Indians, trying to pitch his way back onto the Pirates’ lineup. He amassed an impressive 16-9 record in 31 games but it wasn’t enough to get him back to the smoky Steel City. At the end of the season, the Pirates gave Jim his outright release.

As a free agent in 1949, Jim latched on with the Atlanta Crackers. He was pitching in his hometown, in the same stadium he had grown up in as he watched his father’s professional baseball life begin to sputter down. In 30 games he completed a 10-14 record in 178 innings, not quite good enough at age 33 for someone to pick up his option.

The story was even more interesting in his final year as a professional baseball player. With the Class B Tampa Smokers of the Florida International League he put on an impressive show with a 9-1 record in 26 games and 114 innings pitched. Not bad at all for a 34-year-old. His final big-league career record was 97-96 with an ERA of 3.96. He recorded 84 complete games and 13 shutouts. With the conclusion of that season, Jim adjusted to life without baseball. He settled in Marietta and began working as a draftsman in the aircraft industry. Those old art school classes he had taken in Cleveland paid dividends. This job lasted until he retired in the 1980s. He also began playing golf seriously. He had started golfing as a player but now had time to work on his game. He became adept enough at golf to turn professional, playing in tournaments on weekends or while on vacation from the airplane factory. These jobs paid him more than baseball had. A life-long smoker, Jim’s cancerous larynx was removed in 1982. From that point on he relied upon Leola to communicate with the world, as she became an accomplished lip-reader.  

Jim’s cancer re-emerged in 1988 and killed him on September 2, just days before his 72^nd birthday. Completing the pattern set in childhood, he was buried not far from his father in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. Jim followed his father posthumously in still another way in 1992. Ten years after his father had been enshrined, James Bagby, Jr. joined him in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.          

Notes

1. Graham, Frank, “Bagby and Son.” Liberty, September 26, 1942 p.21

2. Clifford Bloodgood “Beginner’s Luck” Baseball, April 1941 p.487

3. Troy, Jack “Bagby, Jr, Just Like His Pop, Even to Ability to Sock, Happy with tribe for Whom Father had 31 wins in’20” The Sporting News February 27, 1941 p. 3

4. “Bosox Chief Lack Plugged by Pytlak In Three-Way Deal” The Sporting News December 19, 1940 p.1

5. McAuley, Ed, “Cleveland Pitching Keeps Its Date with Best In Loop Rating” The Sporting News April 24, 1941 p.1

6. “Once in a Lifetime” The Sporting News February 20, 1941 p.8

7. Holway, John B. “A Mystery Man in the End to DiMaggio’s Streak” The New York Times July 15, 1990 p. S1

8. Who’s Who in Baseball 1947, p.60

9. Doyle, Charles J. “Hank Quit When Bucs Snubbed His Bid For Release” The Sporting News, February 19, 1947 p.3

Sources

Graham, Frank “Bagby and Son” Liberty, September 26, 1942, p.21

Bloodgood, Clifford “Beginners Luck”, Baseball, April 1941, p. 487

Troy, Jack “Bagby, Jr. Just Like His Pop, even in the ability to Sock, Happy with Tribe for Whom Father had 31 wins in ’20” The Sporting News, February 27, 1941, p.3 

“Bosox Chief Lack Plugged by Pytlak in Three Way Deal” The Sporting News, December 19, 1941, p.1

“Cleveland Pitching Keeps its Date with Best in Loop Rating” The Sporting News, April 24, 1941, p.1

“Once in a Lifetime” The Sporting News, February 20, 1941, p.8

Holway, John B. “A Mystery Man in the End to DiMaggio’s Streak” The New York Times, July 15, 1990 p. S1

Who’s Who in Baseball 1947, p. 60

“Hank Quit When Bucs Snubbed His Bid for Release” The Sporting News, February 19, 1947, p. 3

Statistics come from: Palmer, Pete and Gillette, Gary, The Baseball Encyclopedia (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004)

Additional data from www.retrosheet.org and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame and Museum website: http://www.gshf.org/site/

Moe Berg was destined to be not a slayer of dragons but a maverick who went beyond the borders of ordinary life. Berg had a nervous vitality about his person. His movements were animal-like. He appeared to be a person out of sync and out of sympathy with his environment. Moe Berg was in a world by himself, passionately interested in knowledge for its own sake. He was also quick to share this knowledge to anyone who cared to listen to him. In essence he was a free spirit. John Kieran, a former sports columnist for the New York Times, called Moe “The most scholarly athlete I ever knew.”

What was the real mystery of Moe Berg? Was he really a spy? Was he a complex human being? No revelations can touch his innermost secrets. A complex yet simple man, he was said to have asked minutes before he died, “How did the Mets do today?”

Morris Berg, allegedly master of 12 languages, was born in a cold-water tenement on East 121st Street in Manhattan on March 2, 1902, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Bernard Berg, a druggist, and Rose Tashker. Bernard Berg arrived in New York from the Ukraine in 1894 and found work ironing in a laundry. Rose arrived two years later when Bernard had saved enough money. Bernard had also set aside enough money to open his own laundry on the Lower East Side. He had higher ambitions, though, and attended night school at the Columbia College of Pharmacy. By the time Moe was born, joining older siblings Samuel and Ethel, Bernard was a pharmacist.

At nine months of age Moe moved with his family to the Roseville section of Newark, New Jersey, where Bernard Berg opened his own pharmacy. It was for the Roseville Methodist Episcopal Church that Moe played his first organized ball. As he was Jewish, he invented a new name for himself, Runt Wolfe. His father worked for thirty years so that his children would have a college education. Samuel became a medical doctor, Ethel a schoolteacher. The family felt that Moe should become a lawyer. And so he did.

Moe attended Barringer High School and was an all-city third baseman with a rifle arm. Berg graduated from Barringer at the tender age of sixteen and a year later went to New York University. One year later he transferred to Princeton University. Most of the students attending Princeton were Protestants from wealthy families. Moe, Jewish and not affluent, hovered around the periphery of that closed society. He was a loner and perhaps this contributed to his mysterious ways many years later. At Princeton Berg studied classical and Romance languages: Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian. He also studied German and even Sanskrit.

Because he was Jewish, Moe ran into some awkward moments at Princeton. One such incident came about when one of his teammates was nominated for membership in one of the prestigious dining clubs so essential to social life at Princeton. The teammate accepted on the condition that Moe Berg would also become a member. The club acceded to those wishes on the condition that Berg not attempt to bring any more Jews into the club. Moe Berg said no thanks to this requirement. His teammate also declined to join. Moe, feeling responsible for his teammate’s refusal to join, talked him into becoming a member. Left with a bitter taste in his mouth about Princeton, Berg never returned for any class reunions.

Baseball gained Berg something like acceptance, as he started for the Princeton nine for three years. During his last year he was captain and a star shortstop. That team was the best Princeton ever had, winning 18 straight games and handing Holy Cross star pitcher Ownie Carroll one of his two losses as a college pitcher. Moe graduated with honors in 1923, 24th in a class of 211.

After graduation, Moe Berg signed with Brooklyn of the National League. He also entered Columbia Law School, eventually receiving his law degree in 1930. At this point in life he encountered Dutch Carter, an eminent lawyer who advised him to keep playing professional baseball. Carter had wanted a baseball career himself, but his family had persuaded him to follow the law, and he still regretted it. He told Berg that he would have plenty of time to practice law after his baseball career was over. Berg followed his advice, also turning down a position at Princeton to teach Romance languages.

Moe Berg started his baseball career in 1923 with Brooklyn of the National League as a shortstop and batted a puny .186. In 1924 he was with Minneapolis and Toledo in the American Association playing third base and shortstop with a combined average of .264. In 1925 he was with Reading of the International League as a shortstop, batting .311. Finally making it back to the majors in 1926, he played in 41 games for the White Sox, batting .221. It was in 1927 with the White Sox that he inadvertently became a catcher. Ray Schalk, manager of the Sox and a reserve catcher, was out with a broken thumb. Buck Crouse was also injured. Then in a game in Boston Harry McCurdy had his hand slashed accidentally by a Boston batter.

Schalk was in a panic. Looking up and down the bench, he said, “Can any of you fellows catch?” Moe said he used to think he could. Schalk asked who said Moe couldn’t. Moe’s answer: “My high school coach.” Schalk assured Berg that he’d be obliged if Moe could prove his high school coach wrong.

Moe strapped on the so-called tools of ignorance and proved that indeed he could catch. Schalk was so delighted with Berg after the game he hugged and kissed him. There was no turning back. The brightest man in baseball was now wedded to the tools of ignorance. Berg was an excellent defensive catcher. Possessing a strong arm, he could gun down the swiftest baserunners. His hitting left something to be desired. Berg batted only .243 with six home runs lifetime. But his baseball acumen in calling games and his knowledge of the hitters put him in great demand around the league. Moe went on to play for Cleveland, Washington and Boston in the American League until his retirement after the 1939 season. In all he spent fifteen seasons in the majors mainly because of his defensive skills and his knowledge of baseball.

When Ted Williams was in his second year with Red Sox, he sought out Moe Berg for advice. Williams wanted to know about what made great hitters like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Berg replied, “Gehrig would wait and wait and wait until he hit the pitch almost out of the catcher’s glove. As to Ruth he had no weaknesses, he had a good eye and laid off pitches out of the strike zone. Ted,” Moe said, “you most resemble a hitter like Shoeless Joe Jackson. But you are better than all of them. When it comes to wrists you have the best.” Whether at this early stage of Williams’ career Moe was being honest or just trying to pump up Ted’s confidence is debatable; what Williams went on to do is not.

In 1934 Berg’s career took the turn that made him the stuff of legend. Now a member of the team of Americans that took baseball to Japan, he presumably walked the streets of Tokyo dressed in a long black kimono. He entered St. Luke’s Hospital carrying a bouquet of flowers intended for Ambassador Joseph Grew’s daughter (Mrs. Cecil Burton), who had recently given birth to a daughter. He introduced himself as a friend of Mrs. Burton but instead of going to her room went up to the roof and using a motion picture camera shot the skyline and other important parts of Tokyo. He never visited Mrs. Burton. In 1942, General Jimmy Doolittle’s pilots viewed Berg’s photos before their famous raid on Tokyo in April 1942. However, the pictures were too old to be useful to the pilots.

In August 1943, Moe Berg was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), later to become the CIA, by General William (Wild Bill) Donovan, former commander of the Fighting Sixty-Ninth Regiment in World War I. Berg had just finished his tour of South American countries to secure cooperation between them and the United States in the war against the Axis.

One of Berg’s first assignments was to parachute into Yugoslavia to inquire into the relative strengths of the Chetniks loyal to King Peter who were led by Draza Mihajlovic and the Communist partisans led by Josip Broz (Tito) in their fight against the Germans. Talking to both men and analyzing their relative strengths, Berg felt that the partisans under Tito were superior and had the backing of the Yugoslav people. Thus the greater aid went to Tito.

On another mission Berg posed as a German businessman in Switzerland. His job order from the OSS was to carry a shoulder-holstered pistol and assassinate Werner Heisenberg, the top scientist suspected of working on an atomic bomb (if indeed the Germans were moving ahead on the A-Bomb). Heisenberg divulged nothing. Berg, who was to shoot him on the spot and then take cyanide to avoid capture, concluded that the Germans were nowhere close to an atomic bomb. Heisenberg and Berg were to live another day.

Generally serious, Berg had a lighter side. With the Washington Senators his roomie was a fellow named Dave Harris, a slow-moving Southerner who once was deputized as a sheriff to track down some men who had stolen a mule. One day Harris was feeling a bit sickly and told his roomate Moe that he was “doin’ poorly.” Moe said, “Stick out your tongue.” Harris complied and Moe told him, “Dave, you are suffering from a bit of intestinal fortitude.” The next day Harris informed reporters that he had shaken off that little bit of intestinal fortitude. But Harris had the last laugh: “Moe, I can drive in more runs in a month than you smart guys can think across the plate all season.”

One day in Philadelphia the temperature reached about one hundred degrees. Moe dutifully put on the equipment and stoically went out to catch, the perspiration coming out his body profusely. Berg was catching Earl Whitehill, a fast but wild lefty, that day. In the seventh inning Doc Cramer came to bat and got into a battle with Whitehill over who was going to outstare the other. Meanwhile, Berg was crouching down every time he gave a signal and getting up while the two were staring at each other. This went on for quite some time with Moe going up and down like a yo-yo. In disgust Berg peeled off his chest protector, shin guards, and mask and laid them neatly on home plate. He then turned to Bill McGowan, the home-plate umpire, and said, “I’ll return when those two guys decide to play baseball. Right now I’m going to take a shower.”

One of Berg’s many eccentricities involved the newspaper. He would not let anyone touch his newspapers until he had read them. If anyone did touch them, Berg considered them dead and would go out and buy the papers again. Even in a snowstorm Berg would go out to buy papers if someone had touched them before he did.

Moe was a proud man. When he was asked to write his biography, he angrily refused when his co-author mistakenly thought he was Moe of the Three Stooges. Berg also supposedly refused the Medal of Merit when he was told he could not explain to friends why he earned it. His sister accepted it after his death.

Notwithstanding living in a cold-water flat, the entire Berg family was intelligent and sought learning. The genes must have been there in Moe for intelligence and learning. So what made Moe seek a life of baseball and spying? Why did he never marry? Why did he have the knack of suddenly appearing and then disappearing at a moment’s notice? We know that when he attended Princeton he was on the fringe of that society of wealthy Protestant students and was never fully accepted into their world. Did his experience at Princeton have anything to do with his being on the fringe of society in his everyday life? If his experience at Princeton had been one of acceptance, would it have changed his makeup and the extent of his participation in the broader society? Loners are often thought of as dangerous people. But Moe was charming and interesting. He was a loner yet sought after as company. How do we explain this paradox? By now we have mostly only questions and only mere suppositions about Berg.

Marriage seems to have been out of the question. The closest Berg came to marriage was his involvement with Estella Huni, whose father owned the New Haven School of Music. Tall, beautiful, and sophisticated, she was an intellectual match for Moe. They had much in common-opera, art, books and witty conversation. Early in 1944 Moe was sent to Europe, and his correspondence with Estella was sparse. She braved it out for a while, but then his letters stopped altogether, and she gave up the dream of marrying him. She eventually married a naval officer.

Berg’s uncanny knack for appearing and suddenly vanishing came from his days at Princeton and from his personality that demanded utter secrecy where his inner life was concerned. He wanted to be mysterious, to make himself the intriguing figure his psyche demanded.

Moe Berg’s whole family, especially his brother Sam and his sister Ethel, was somewhat enigmatic. Dr. Sam, as he liked to be called, never married and could be cruel. Ethel aspired to be an actress but settled upon being a schoolteacher and also never married. Ethel became an excellent kindergarten teacher and was given the responsibility of instructing other kindergarten teachers. She was noted for roller-skating down the corridors of the school. Dr. Sam and Ethel detested each other and did not speak for 30 years.

His father Bernard chose not to live in a Jewish section of Newark. He preferred to live among a more Gentile population. Accordingly, Moe lived on the fringe of society at a young age and continued doing so at Princeton. The Bergs also felt they were superior to their other relatives and looked down upon them. At family gatherings they would stand apart from other members, living on the fringe of their own extended family. Did this come into play for Moe? It would seem so.

Bernard Berg didn’t approve of Moe’s baseball career. Despite Moe’s pleadings he never attended a baseball game, let alone one in which Moe was playing. He was vehemently opposed to sports because he felt they were distractions in one’s life. Moe’s father tried but failed to discourage his son’s athletic leanings. Asked if he felt he had wasted his life, Moe always replied, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a Supreme Court justice.”

Rose, on the other hand, exulted in the fame it brought her son. When Moe was playing baseball at Princeton, he and his father exchanged acrimonious letters over his athletic activities. Meanwhile, Dr. Sam always felt that he was the neglected one in the family and was jealous of the attention that came Moe’s way. Ethel, caught in the middle of all this, was probably the one most neglected.

Moe would appear from nowhere and just as suddenly disappear. It was his nature. He wanted to be free of obligations such as deep relationships with other people. Granted, he was charming and witty, but he always shrouded himself. He was the perfect man to be a spy because he revealed little about himself. His innermost feelings were as thoroughly classified as his spy activities.

Some people considered him a leech who invited himself to affairs that others paid for. Some sought him out passionately for his wide-ranging knowledge and ability to relate facts and figures to all that cared to listen. But did he ever reveal himself? Did he ever divulge his innermost feelings and thoughts to someone? He was like the spy who came in from the cold. Staying on the fringe of society, free to roam wherever he wanted, from time to time he still needed the warmth of human society to bolster him.

His brother Samuel, with whom he lived for a while, said that after the war Moe became a bit moody and snappish. Moe seemed a lost soul. He appeared directionless, living only for his books. He would show up at Mets games, usually sitting alone in the right field stands, wearing his customary black suit and carrying a Neville Chamberlain black umbrella. After almost 17 years of having Moe live with him and with papers and books piling up to the point that it was driving him insane, Sam finally asked Moe to leave. Moe did not budge. Dr. Sam had lawyers draw up eviction papers to get Moe out of the house.

Moe wound up living out his life in Ethel’s home in Belleville, New Jersey. Things were not always good there, either. One time when a relative came to visit Moe, he offered to take her to see writer Anita Loos. Ethel upon hearing this rushed out of the house and began tearing up weeds out of the garden. She said, “That son of a gun never asks me to go with him to meet Anita Loos and now he asks you.”

Whenever anyone would ask any question that Moe felt uneasy about, he would put a finger to his lips and utter “Shhh.” Was this shushing a shield against not only his spy activities but also his innermost feelings? Or was it part of a vivid fantasy life?

Adding to all this was a business loss that Moe suffered from a company in which he had invested $4,000. The company, which manufactured stationery, had done well, and Moe was reported to have made profits of about $250,000. However, the profits were plowed back into the business when it expanded. Unfortunately, the expansion did not work out. The company went bankrupt, and Moe never realized his profits. Moe, it seemed, never complained to anyone over this financial loss; he seemed to worry more about all the people that lost their jobs when the firm went under. There were debts to be paid, and Moe with the help of friends paid them. His reaction was to plunge more deeply into his world of books and study.

Moe Berg was not of his time. Perhaps he saw himself as a throwback to more chivalrous centuries, where loyalty, honesty and courtesy were valued. Maybe he was the knight-errant who bravely fought on when he knew he was doomed or the lone cowboy who would ride into town, root out the bad guys, and ride off into the sunset. The townsfolk would be grateful but would never make him sheriff. In any case, he lived out his life without having a solid relationship with anyone.

Little about Moe Berg adds up. How did he last so long in the majors, continuously from 1926 to 1939, when he was no better than a mediocre player? He may have been a fine catcher, but he was a weak hitter in an era of heavy hitters, when weak hitters didn’t last long. His more or less exact contemporaries in the American League alone include Gehrig, Gehringer, Grove, Lyons, Cochrane, Dickey, and other players of similar caliber. Was he kept on major league rosters at the behest of the government for his undercover abilities? Maybe, but the Tokyo episode, in which he supposedly passed himself off as Japanese, has the implausibility of a bad spy novel or movie. Perhaps he did everything claimed for him, but perhaps he had an overly romanticized fantasy life and was a master con; the finger pressed to the lips is a masterful touch. He was intelligent, to be sure, but it’s also possible he was just plain unbalanced or wanted to make himself appear more important than he was.

Moe Berg died on May 29, 1972, in Belleville, New Jersey, after a fall at his sister’s home. His brother and sister survived him.

Sources

BaseballLibrary.com.

Dawidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Horvitz, Peter S., and Joachim Horvitz. The Big Book of Jewish Baseball: An Encyclopedia and Anecdotal History. New York: S.P.I Books, 2001.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

Kaufman, Louis, Barbara Fitzgerald, and Tom Sewell. Moe Berg: Athlete, Scholar, Spy. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.

Morris Berg files at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

New York Times. Obituary. June 1, 1972.

Seidel, Michael. Ted Williams: A Baseball Life. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1991.

Shatzkin, Mike ed. The Ballplayers. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990.

Louis William Berger, also called “Bozie,” “Bosey,” or “Boze,” was born on May 13, 1910, on an Army post in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Arlington, Virginia.

His father, also Louis Berger, was a career Army man, a noncommissioned officer, who served in France during World War I. Berger’s mother was Mary E. Daywalt of Baltimore. Boze also had a twin sister, Elizabeth.

Berger graduated from McKinley Technical High School in Washington and the University of Maryland, in 1932. At Maryland he was an all-American athlete excelling at baseball, basketball (he was the university’s first All-American basketball player), and football. A star halfback on the football team, he scored two touchdowns in his first varsity game at Yale, forcing a 13-13 tie with the Ivy League school.

University of Maryland athletic director H.C. Byrd said Berger possessed the greatest competitive spirit of any athlete he had seen. In his honor, the university started a Bozie Berger Cup during his rookie year in the major leagues, annually awarded to an outstanding University of Maryland athlete. 

A member of the Omicron Delta Kappa fraternity, Berger was the vice president of the Student Government Association and participated in the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps, achieving the cadet ranking of major. After graduating, he held a reserve commission in the Army while he pursued a career in professional baseball.

As the third baseman for the Maryland Terrapins, Berger batted .365 in his senior season and had a .978 fielding percentage, making him a widely sought after prospect coming out of the college ranks. According to Cleveland scout Bill Bradley, Berger had as many as a dozen scouts watching him at a time. He was considered one of the most skillful fielders among college baseball players of the day.

The decision came down to Cleveland or Detroit, but Indians general manager Billy Evans told Berger’s coach that the youngster would have a much better chance of rising quickly to the major-league club, because the Tribe was being rebuilt with young prospects, while the Tigers had a roster populated by veterans. Just before he received his bachelor’s degree in economics, Berger signed with Cleveland for the same salary that Detroit offered. He reported to the team on June 15, 1932, and stayed with the big-league club for a few weeks before being sent to the minors. He appeared in just one game, on August 17. He had one at-bat, a strikeout. 

With the exception of that one at-bat, Berger spent his first three seasons in the minors. His first stop was with the Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Grays of the Class B New York-Pennsylvania League during the summer of 1932. In 21 games, playing mostly third base and some at second and shortstop, Berger batted .298 in 84 at-bats, hitting one home run and driving in 10 runs. He impressed Cleveland enough that he earned a promotion to the New Orleans Pelicans for the following season. He did not fare as well with the Pelicans in the Class A Southern Association, but impressed with his glove by playing every infield position. Berger played in 78 games, but hit only .240 in 225 at-bats with two home runs, 31 RBIs, 12 doubles, four triples, and three stolen bases.

In 1934, Fordham baseball coach Art Devlin, a veteran of John McGraw’s New York Giants teams, told a sportswriter that Berger was the best fielder he’d seen since he coached Frank Frisch at Fordham, and thought he would hit over .300 in his first year with Cleveland. Cleveland general manager Billy Evans was also excited by the young Berger, saying he was a “can’t miss” star in waiting. Yet observers said Berger had a lot of trouble hitting curveballs as a result of standing too close to the plate and holding his hands too close to his body, not allowing himself to reach for balls breaking on the outside corner of the plate.

Berger also impressed Cleveland manager Walter Johnson during spring training in 1934. He used the young prospect throughout much of the exhibition season. Second base was a spot of uncertainty for the Indians. Odell Hale, the leading candidate for the position, was a natural third baseman, while Berger showed proficiency at all infield positions. Ultimately Johnson felt the young Berger needed more seasoning in New Orleans before he could join the big-league club, and Hale won the starting second-base job. Berger was sent back to New Orleans with instructions for Pelicans manager Larry Gilbert to rectify his inability to hit the curveball.

At New Orleans, Berger showed enough improvement at the plate at earn Most Valuable Player honors. He batted .313 for the pennant- and Dixie Series-winning Pelicans. He had a .471 slugging percentage and tied for the league lead in base hits (190). Hitting in the second spot in the lineup, he drove in 94 runs, scored 105 times, and hit 42 doubles, 10 triples, and 11 home runs. He had 11 stolen bases. He also proved a standout defensively at second base, recording 990 chances, one short of the league record, and participated in 112 double plays.

Sportswriter Sam Murphy said that Berger was able to improve by simply watching other batters in the league. He developed a crouch and began hitting the curves swooping toward him. When opposing pitchers adjusted by throwing fastballs high and inside, forcing Berger out of his crouch, he went into a half-crouch and found that he was successfully able to hit anything hurled at him, Murphy wrote.

Berger earned another cup of coffee with the big-league club at the end of the 1934 season, but never entered a game. However Johnson announced that Berger would make the 1935 team either at second or at third.

The spot opened for Berger when Cleveland moved Odell Hale to third base. Before the season began, Berger was told he would probably also see action in right field because of his strong right arm. “For combined strength and accuracy of throwing, probably no man in the American League outshines him,” Gordon Cobbledick wrote in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on April 8, 1935. Johnson had high hopes for the rookie; he even told a sportswriter in January that Berger held the destiny of the 1935 Indians in his own hands. As for Berger, he said, “I know it is a great responsibility, but I really haven’t given thought to it. I’m going to do the best I can and if that isn’t good enough it’ll be just too bad for me.”

Pelicans manager Larry Gilbert told Cobbledick on February 25, “In the field he can do anything any second baseman can do. He’s so good that if he hits .260 or .270 he will be a valuable man, but I believe he’ll do better than that.” Sportswriter Charles L. Dufour agreed, writing in the New Orleans Item that Berger was one of the greatest baseball heroes in the history of the Pelicans. “If second base strength is all you need to be a pennant winner you’ve got it,” he wrote.

As the starting second baseman for the 1935 Indians, Berger played 124 games and committed 27 errors, more than average for the era, but he handled many more chances that most at his position. He was, perhaps, an above-average defensive player. He played in 124 games, but might have played in more if he had swung the bat better. He recorded a .258 batting average, only 5 home runs, and 43 RBIs. According to Billy Evans, big-league pitchers were finding they could get Berger with the curveball.

Manager Johnson told Boston sportswriter John Drohan in May, “The trouble with Berger is that he’s trying too hard. But he may snap out of it anytime.” Johnson had big expectations for the Indians, but they could muster only an 82-71 third-place finish.

Berger lost his starting job to rookie Roy Hughes after hurting his arm while making a fast underhanded throw. Hughes played 40 games at second. In retrospect, wrote Gordon Cobbledick in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in March 1936, “Much – undoubtedly too much – was expected of Berger in spring training last year. He looked pitifully weak at times, but never allowed his weakness to get him down.”

During the 1935-1936 offseason, Berger spent time at his Rosslyn, Virginia, home resting his injured arms and coaching the Fort Myer Army post basketball team. He was confident going into the 1936 season that he could win back the starting job at second. He had signed a new contract that included a salary increase.

But Hughes was handed the starting job. Berger appeared in only 28 games. He had 52 at-bats and connected for only nine base hits, for a measly .173 batting average.

In the offseason the Indians placed Berger on waivers, and just as the 1937 season began, the Chicago White Sox picked him up. While replacing an injured Tony Piet at third for 40 games, Berger once again failed to impress with his fielding as he committed 10 errors. In 130 at-bats, he hit 5 home runs, drove in 13 runs, and batted .238 with a .322 on-base percentage.

At the start of the 1938 season, Berger got his chance to prove himself with the White Sox after starting shortstop Luke Appling was injured. Berger accumulated the most plate appearances in his career that season with 470 at-bats and 43 walks while filling in mostly at second base and shortstop. But he hit only .217 and made 21 errors in 67 games at shortstop and 15 errors in 42 games at second base. He hit three home runs and had 36 RBIs.

On December 21, 1938, the White Sox traded Berger to the Boston Red Sox for infielder Eric McNair. McNair went on to have a successful season, playing mostly third base for the White Sox and batting .324 with 82 RBIs. Berger meanwhile spent most of the season on the bench. He accumulated only 30 at-bats in 20 games, rapping out nine hits for a token .300 batting average. He played 10 games at shortstop, five games at third base, and two at second base.

With highly touted rookie Jim Tabor getting most of the action at third base, Berger was “wearing the seat of his pants thin” by riding the bench, according to Boston sportswriter Vic Stout. He had appeared in just two games without any at-bats when presented with an opportunity in June. Tabor was briefly benched by manager Joe Cronin. Berger was so excited by the opportunity that an hour before Red Sox batting practice, he went out to the diamond, stood at third, and had grounders batted to him. That day against the Washington Senators, Berger went 1-for-2 with a double, a fly out, and a sacrifice bunt. His second-inning RBI became the game-winner as Lefty Grove pitched a 3-0 shutout. Tabor retained his job however and had a successful rookie season. 

For Berger, 1939 was his last major-league season. On December 26, the Brooklyn Dodgers purchased his contract from the Red Sox for the $7,500 waiver price. The Dodgers signed him as a utility infielder, and he went to spring training in 1940 with hopes of making the big-league club. But he faced a big obstacle: a young, up-and-coming rookie by the name of Pee Wee Reese. The underweight shortstop asked Berger how he could quickly put on weight. Berger took Reese to dinner and instructed the rookie to eat everything the experienced veteran ate. Reese was sick for three days.

Before Opening Day, Berger was sent to the Dodgers’ Montreal farm club in the International League, where he spent the entire season. He played in 134 games, and hit only.232 in 435 at-bats, with 25 doubles, 6 home runs, and 50 RBIs.

Before the 1941 season, the New York Yankees acquired Berger from the Dodgers for first baseman Jack Graham. That season, he played for four minor-league teams: Newark, Kansas City, Toledo, and Seattle. At Kansas City and Toledo in the International League, he batted only .209 in 91 at-bats. While playing for Seattle, Berger was able to contribute to the team’s Pacific Coast League championship, hitting .246 in 130 at-bats with one home run and 17 RBIs. It was during this season that Berger married the former Mary Jean Lowe.

Although he signed on with the International League’s Baltimore Orioles as a player/coach for 1942, Berger was unable to assume those duties. The United States entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Berger was activated as an Army officer. He reported for duty on February 3, 1942. He went on to serve for 20 years, first as an Army officer, then with the Air Force. He retired as a lieutenant colonel.

Berger had been looking forward to playing for and coaching the Orioles, since he was from the area, but he was also eager to serve his country. “Baseball was a lot of fun but it wasn’t a very steady job,” he told the County Advertiser of Montgomery County, Maryland, in 1983. “With a wife and child on the way, I wanted something a little more secure.” Berger never played professional baseball at any level again, although he did participate in a Service All-Star game in 1942.

During World War II, Berger served in China. After the war, he became a United Nations observer. During the Korean War, he was the commander of Iwakuni Air Force Base in Japan. Later he commanded Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service. After retiring from the Air Force in 1962, Berger worked as the director of building services at the University of Maryland until 1974.

Boze Berger died of a heart attack on November 3, 1992. He was 82 years old. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, outside Washington. Shortly after his death, his wife, Mary Jean, wrote in a note found in his Hall of Fame file that if he could live his life all over again, he would do it the exact same way – only he would be a switch-hitter. 

Sources

Most statistical information about Berger’s career comes from www.retrosheet.org, www.baseball-reference.com, and www.baseball-almanac.com

Berger’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame library contains unidentified clippings.

Graham, Dillon. “Berger Coaches Army Cagers; Says Arm Is in Good Shape.” Associated Press, January 25, 1936.

Cobbledick, Gordon. “Extra Man Role May Aid Berger.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 6, 1936.

Cobbledick, Gordon. “Bill Rapp, Who Discovered Ferrell, Tipped Off Indians on Bozo Berger.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 1, 1935.

Cobbledick, Gordon. “Berger Draws Praise of Old Nats’ Speeder.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 25, 1934.

Cobbledick, Gordon. “Berger “Can’t Miss as Star, Says Evans.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 17, 1934.

Cobbledick, Gordon. “Berger Groomed to Play ‘Em Off Wall.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 8, 1935.

Cobbledick, Gordon. “Berger Joins Batterymen in 1^st Drill.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 25, 1935.

Associated Press. “Indians Put Finger on 2d Sacker.” January 10, 1935.

Rossomondo, Bob. “Bosey’s Baseball.” The County Advertiser, Montgomery County, Maryland, July 27, 1983.

Thomas Francis Aloysius Carey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on October 11, 1906. Carey understated his age during his playing career, shaving two years by claiming he was born in 1908 rather than 1906. (1) According to the 1910 Census, his father, Patrick, was a laborer who emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1889, a year after Tom’s mother, Mary, arrived from Ireland. Patrick married Mary about 1892, and they had seven children, five of whom survived, Annie (born in July 1893), William (December 1896), Patrick (May 1899), Peter (1904) and Thomas, the youngest. The father died while Tom was a child, so he lived with his brother-in-law, his sister, and their three children. In 1920, Patrick, Peter, and Thomas were living with their widowed mother at 807 Willow Avenue in Hoboken. In 1930, Patrick (by then a policeman), Peter, and Thomas were living with their mother at 1118 Park Avenue. After attending Hoboken’s Our Lady of Grace grammar school, where he played basketball as well as baseball, Carey went to work in one of the city’s industrial shops, but he continued to play ball. 

Known as “Scoops” or “The Hoboken Harp,” the 5-foot-8, 170-pound right-hander began his professional baseball career in 1928, sticking briefly with Jersey City in the International League before he was released. The next year, Carey caught on with the West New York and New Jersey semipro club, a strong team that played the Bushwicks, the Cuban Giants, and Philadelphia Giants. 

Carey was playing semipro ball in New York in 1930 when Yankees scout Paul Krichell signed him to play shortstop for the pennant-winning Chambersburg (Pennsylvania) Young Yanks of the Class D Blue Ridge League. Carey hit .306 with 10 home runs in 107 games. Near the end of that season, he was transferred to Scranton of the Class B New York-Pennsylvania League, where St. Louis Cardinals scout Charley Kelchner acquired him to play with Houston in the Texas League the following year. At Houston, Carey starred at shortstop behind Dizzy Dean (Paul Dean, Billy Myers, Tex Carleton, and Joe Medwick were also on that team), batting.240 with 15 doubles and 8 triples. In 1932, he played in 142 games for Houston and 20 for Columbus in the American Association. His average with Houston jumped to .270 but in his 68 at-bats for Columbus, he hit only .191. 

In 1933, Scoops was transferred to Rochester of the International League, where he had three strong seasons. After he hit.297 and .287 in his first two seasons, the Cardinals took him to spring training in Bradenton, Florida, in 1935, but sent him back to Rochester, where he became the team captain. In July 1935, Carey, batting .301, was purchased from Rochester by the St. Louis Browns to replace the disabled Ollie Bejma at second base. (2) A Browns publicist described Carey as “the outstanding prospect among minor league infielders.” Although he was a light hitter, Carey “never failed to sparkle on defense,” and he was regarded as “an aggressive, fighting player who will go after any ball and run out the weakest of pop flies.” 

Carey’s major-league debut on July 19 with Rogers Hornsby’s Browns came as a surprise. When the 28-year-old infielder reported to the Browns manager at Yankee Stadium, Hornsby growled, “You were supposed to be here yesterday,” and told the rookie that he would play second base. In the minor leagues, Carey had played only shortstop, but he became adept at the new position after committing a league-high 25 errors in 1936. (3)  

He broke in nicely, going 2-for-4 with two doubles and a run batted in as the Browns beat the Bronx Bombers, 7-6. Carey’s most productive day that year was probably the August 11 doubleheader, when he was 1-for-4 and 4-for-5. Although the Browns finished seventh in 1935, Carey hit .291 in his rookie season, with 22 extra-base hits (no homers) and drove in 42 runs, while playing second base in 76 games. 

He had two productive seasons in St. Louis: In 1936, he played a career-high 134 games, hitting .273 with 27 doubles, 6 triples, 58 runs scored, and 57 runs batted in; the next year, he hit .275 with 24 doubles, 54 runs, and 40 RBIs in 130 games. He hit two home runs in his career, both solo shots, on August 2, 1936, and June 16, 1937. Even though Hornsby had played only occasionally since the 1931 season, his biographer nonetheless noted Carey’s arrival on the scene in the spring of 1937: “Hornsby …sat down in favor of Tom Carey, and from then on, regardless of front-office wishes, he was willing to play only when it wasn’t cold and the ground was dry.” (4)

The Browns had a new manager in 1938, Gabby Street, and after two seasons as a full-time player, Carey was optioned to the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood Stars, where he played shortstop and batted .297 in 157 games. During the 1938 season, the Browns acquired Don Heffner from the Yankees to replace Carey at second base, and on December 6, 1938, St. Louis traded Carey to the Boston Red Sox for pitcher Johnny Marcum. In Boston, Scoops served as a utility infielder; manager Joe Cronin called Carey “an excellent infield insurance policy.” During spring training, Edwin Rumill of Boston’s Christian Science Monitor commented, “Tom Carey played a sparkling defensive game at second base. …Too bad he doesn’t hit.” (5)

Backing up second baseman Bobby Doerr and shortstop-manager Cronin in 1939, Carey appeared in only 54 games—the most he ever played in a single season with the Red Sox.

Carey accumulated 161 at-bats (he averaged .242) and drove in 20 runs. In 1940, he had only 62 at-bats, mostly filling in when Bobby Doerr pulled a muscle in early June and when Cronin benched himself with a severe head cold in mid-July. Carey drove in seven runs (one of them a single in the 13^th inning to win the September 10 game), and batted .323, but there just wasn’t the room for him to play more regularly. With the addition of utility man Skeeter Newsome to the Red Sox in 1941, he hit .190 in 21 at-bats without an extra-base hit and without driving in a run – though he scored seven.

Carey saw his already limited playing time dwindle to two innings in 1942, leading one newspaper wag – exactly who is uncertain because the newspaper article is incomplete — to label him “baseball’s Forgotten Man” and note that Fenway Park patrons saw him play only during infield practice: “A member of the Red Sox in good standing, he has spent 99 44-100 per cent of his time on the bench.” During his brief appearance on the field that year, the Forgotten Man had one hit in a single at-bat, drove in a run, and fielded one chance cleanly—a perfect 1.000 performance. Nevertheless, the Associated Press (which called him “Boston’s $5,000-a-hit player”) argued that Carey’s “backstage activities” — warming up pitchers and throwing batting practice to the regulars, earned his $5,000 salary.  

With Johnny Pesky in the Navy after the 1942 season, it looked as though Carey would get a shot at shortstop, but on the very day — Valentine’s Day — that he received his contract for 1943, he also received notice of reclassification as 1A in the draft and was ordered to report for his physical.

Carey served in the Navy from 1943 to 1945, primarily as baseball coach at the Sampson Naval Training Base in upstate New York. He returned to the Red Sox briefly as a player for their pennant-winning 1946 season. Rosters were swollen in the first year after the war to permit clubs to accommodate returning servicemen, but many saw little playing time. It would not be surprising if Carey, then 37 and having lost three years of major-league-caliber baseball, were a little rusty. But Tom declared himself in better shape than ever, having lost weight and kept fit. “I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t go for five more years,” he said. “I mean that.” The Monitor’s Ed Rumill observed that Carey “has been out-playing, out-hustling, and even out-hitting most of the younger infielders in camp.”

Carey had experience at second, third, and short and offered a steady backup. From spring training, Rumill praised him in print: “A more popular team ballplayer has never had a locker at Fenway. And he is a good hustler. A man who fits in with your team spirit and can step in and play three of the four infield positions is a handy weapon when you are on the prowl for the pennant. History insists that a contender is no stronger than its reserves, and Carey has, in the past, been an ideal reserve.” Rumill foresaw another possible role: “If Cronin feels that he no longer has room for Carey on the varsity … he has the experience and intelligence to fill a coaching or even a managerial berth.”

After the opening bell, Carey got little playing time. He had just one single in five at-bats, usually as a late-inning substitute during games that had become lost causes. In midseason, Rumill wrote, “Cronin had so many infielders, even before the arrival of [Don] Gutteridge, that some of them had to dress in the room adjacent to the regular Sox clubhouse.” (6) Carey was indeed made a coach on the team. “I’d like to stay in baseball, naturally,” he said. “But that’s up to the Red Sox. I’m ready to take any job they give me.” (7)

On October 30, 1946, Boston released the 40-year-old Carey, along with Mace Brown, Mike Ryba, and Charlie Wagner, hiring all four in other capacities. Carey was sent to Wellsville, New York, where he managed the Red Sox’ farm team in the Class D PONY League in 1947 and 1948. In 1949 and 1950, he coached for the Red Sox Birmingham, Alabama, affiliate in the Southern Association. 

We know almost nothing about Carey’s life after baseball. He died from liver disease on February 21, 1970, at Highland Hospital in Rochester, New York. He is buried in Rochester’s Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Grace M. Carey, who died in 1998.

Notes

1. Tucker, Walter Dunn. “How Old Is That Guy, Anyway?” Baseball Research Journal 36 (2007): 94-98.

2. Alexander, Charles. Rogers Hornsby. New York: Henry Holt, 1995: 199.

3. Shatzkin, Mike, ed. The Ballplayers. New York: Arbor House, 1990: 158.

4. Alexander, op. cit.: 211.

5. Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1946. Carey’s playing weight may have increased by the time he got to Boston. Rumill dubbed him a “chubby veteran” when he signed his 1942 contract and later a “pleasant-faced New Yorker, on the roly-poly side.”

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

Sources

Alexander, Charles. Rogers Hornsby. (New York: Henry Holt, 1995)

Ancestry.com.

Baseball-reference.com.

Carey, Thomas. Clipping File. National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Shatzkin, Mike, ed. The Ballplayers. (New York: Arbor House, 1990)

The Sporting News.

Tucker, Walter Dunn. “How Old Is That Guy, Anyway?” Baseball Research Journal 36 (2007): 94-98. This article asserts that Carey claimed a 1909 birthdate, but since all other sources – including contemporary ones — cite 1908, we have elected to keep that date.

Born in Beach Haven, in southern New Jersey, on July 22, 1905, Roger Cramer earned the appellation “Doc” because of his friendship while growing up with a local physician named Joshua Hilliard. Cramer religiously accompanied his friend and mentor on his house calls to patients, often traveling on a “one-hoss dray” in nearby Manahawkin, where he and his family moved to when he was very young. He liked people calling him “Doc” but hated his other nickname, “Flit,” given to him supposedly by a sportswriter. Cramer’s parents Eva and John R. Cramer (a butcher) had six children, though one died young. The Cramers were mainly of Dutch extraction, with some German, and while Doc Cramer did not pursue medicine, he did apprentice as a carpenter. Even during his major-league career, he built houses as a union man during the offseason, always earning more than he made in any year he played professional baseball. 

By the age of eight, Doc had begun to follow baseball obsessively, playing it as often as possible and watching many local games. He probably did not see any major-league games as a child or teenager, as his father did not share in his passion for the game. Perhaps Dad could not figure out why his son threw right-handed and batted left-handed; to his family, this remains a mystery.

Doc Cramer first played baseball on the Beach Haven sandlots with his brother, cousins, and friends, and when he wasn’t making rounds with Dr. Hilliard he played ball constantly. When he was in high school (where he was an A student), he and family members even formed a baseball team of their own, the Sprague and Cramer club. Doc also starred on the Manahawkin High varsity team; when not pitching, Doc played center field, second base, and catcher. He married his childhood sweetheart, Helen, on the day after Christmas in 1927 and they raised two daughters together.  

Still, Connie Mack, a former catcher himself, must have commiserated with the plight of one of his backup catchers, Cy Perkins, to umpire a semipro doubleheader in 1928. All that Mack asked in return was that if Perkins saw any talented athletes, he let the Athletics know about it. With that caveat in hand, Perkins slipped off to a twin bill between the Manahawkin and Beach Haven clubs.

Perkins had advance knowledge that a special young man named Cramer might help out the major-league club. It seems that some time earlier, Perkins and his teammate Jimmy Dykes had stopped by the office of a realtor named Van Dyke to look for some vacation property, and Van Dyke tipped them off to the local phenom. Doc did not disappoint, and at the end of the second game, Perkins approached the young prospect and asked, “How would you like to come to Philadelphia tomorrow morning and see Mr. Mack?”

Cramer shot back, “What time does Mr. Mack reach the park?”

“About 9 o’clock,” replied Perkins.

“I’ll be there at 8:30,” Cramer promised, and the next day he arrived at Shibe Park to meet Connie Mack wearing a suit his brother Paul had bought him for the occasion. Doc’s father tried to persuade him not to go, but he did not listen and headed off for his tryout with his cousin Chris Sprague driving him there. Mack signed up the eager youngster and kept him on the Athletics bench for the rest of the season, then assigned him to the Martinsburg team in the Blue Ridge League.

It was there that in 1929, Doc Cramer began his professional career, in a Class-D minor league consisting of teams primarily from western Maryland. He hit .404 and won the batting championship, beating out future Red Sox teammate Joe Vosmik in the final game of the season. Vosmik needed to have a slightly better day at the plate to win the title. Although he had thrown 30-some innings over the course of the season, Cramer was a fixture in the outfield. An oft-repeated tale, perhaps apocryphal, has Cramer copping the batting crown for himself when his manager started him on the mound for that final game; Cramer kept Vosmik at bay by walking him each time he came to bat. 

Apparently Connie Mack liked what he heard about the Blue Ridge batting champion because he secured him to serve as a reserve outfielder for the rest of the major-league season. Cramer debuted on September 18 in a ninth-inning pinch-hit role against the visiting St. Louis Browns. An 0-for-5 game starting in left field against the Senators was his only other appearance. In all, Cramer came to bat six times without a hit in 1929.

Doc accompanied the Athletics to spring training the next year but did not make the cut when the A’s broke camp, being optioned to Portland in the Pacific Coast League. Years later Cramer related to Peter Golenbock a spring training incident between himself and the Hall of Fame hurler:

“I remember spring training my first year with the A’s. I hit a home run off [Grove] in an intrasquad game. I came up to hit the next time, and Mickey Cochrane said, ‘Look out, he’s going to throw at you.’ He hit me in the ribs. I went into the clubhouse, and after he finished his three innings, he came in and he said, ‘You didn’t hit that one, did you rookie?’”

Luckily for Cramer, he became “a great friend” to the notoriously moody and taciturn Grove.

Doc hit so well at Portland (.347 in 74 games) that Mack called him up to for another viewing in mid-summer.

For the rest of the 1930 season, Cramer was a utility outfielder, working his way into 30 games and chipping out a .232 batting average. Playing the field for Philadelphia proved most frustrating for Doc, as the A’s had three pretty fair veterans standing ahead of him on the depth chart: Al Simmons in left field, Mule Haas in center field, and Bing Miller in right. Otherwise, it was a pretty heady time for Doc to play for the team; besides the legendary manager and starting outfielders, Jimmie Foxx manned first base, Mickey Cochrane caught, and Lefty Grove, George Earnshaw, Eddie Rommel, and Rube Walberg pitched. Cramer did not play in the 1930 World Series, which the Athletics won in six games over the Cardinals.

In 1931, Cramer played on one of the last of the great Philadelphia Athletics teams and his playing time incrementally increased — 65 games and 223 at-bats for a .260 average. He hit his first major league home run, a solo shot, on August 16 off Sarge Connally at Cleveland’s League Park, contributing to a 6-4 Philadelphia win. Earnshaw and Walberg had 21 and 20 wins respectively, and Waite Hoyt came over from Detroit during the season and helped the club win the pennant with 10 wins. Grove remained the ace of the staff with a 31-4 record. To round out this wonderful season, Doc came to bat twice in the World Series that year, getting one hit and two runs batted in as the Athletics lost to the Cardinals in seven games.

In 1932, the Athletics failed to repeat, winning 94 games but finishing second to the Yankees. Mack permitted Cramer to pick up considerably more playing time, at the expense of Bing Miller, and Doc responded with a .336 average in 92 games. His time had finally arrived, but his limited at-bats in his first few seasons undoubtedly cost him a shot at 3,000 hits and an almost certain election to the Hall of Fame.

The country continued to suffer in the ’30s under its seemingly intractable Depression, and no team suffered more financially, despite relatively good attendance, than poor Connie Mack’s Athletics – despite their excellent rosters and contending teams. Beset with financial issues, Mack began to sell or trade his stars to more prosperous clubs, or at the least more adventurous owners. Outfielders Simmons and Haas both went to the White Sox. The development helped Cramer, who received more playing time. In 1933 he worked in 152 games and batted .295, but the team, short of some of its key stars, slipped to mediocrity. In a strange statistical quirk, Cramer, a singles hitter extraordinaire, registered a career-high eight home runs that season.

Lefty Grove departed after the ’33 campaign, and in the next year the club really felt the pinch by sliding into the second division, although again Cramer took advantage of his opportunities by batting .311. In 1935, Doc excelled again with a .332 average on a team increasingly unable to protect him in the order. With Jimmie Foxx, he dominated the team’s offensive categories. As a reward, he was named to the American League All-Star team for the first time, although he did not get a chance to bat in that year’s Midsummer Classic. 

Chronic economic difficulties continued to plague the franchise, compelling Mack to deal Jimmie Foxx and talented pitcher Johnny Marcum to the Red Sox. Soon thereafter, Mack traded Cramer and then-promising shortstop Eric “Boob” McNair also to the Red Sox in exchange for $75,000 and throw-ins Hank Johnson and Al Niemiec. McNair had a couple of good seasons for the Red Sox and one very productive season for the White Sox in 1939, when he batted .324, good for 10th in the league. Cramer was voted onto the American League All-Star team each year from 1937 through 1940. He never forgot his first major league manager, though; Doc loved Connie Mack, always considering him a second father.

Philadelphia may have run out of money, but it launched Cramer’s career and in his last year there, the club brought onto its roster a catcher named Paul Richards from Waxahachie, Texas, one of the greatest baseball minds of all time and Doc’s best friend in baseball.

In 1936, his first season with the Red Sox, Doc had a .292 average, although he hit no home runs that year and did not hit any for more than three years afterwards. He did improve his batting average though, with a .305 mark in ’37 and a .301 campaign in ’38.

On a personal level, Cramer flourished in Boston, his favorite city. His daughter Joan remembers birthday parties with the players and their children in attendance. In one of her more memorable parties, the young Joan saw Ted Williams walking toward her with his tan pants and brown and white sports coat and in a fit of mischief grabbed a garden hose and sprayed the Splendid Splinter from head to toe. Ted was furious, but he never did catch her.

Another time Doc went to visit a jewelry store in Boston and found it closed. Turning to leave, he stepped on a bag in the foyer, which upon inspection revealed dozens of uncut diamonds. The store had closed for the day, but Cramer contacted the store’s owner the next morning and to the merchant’s great relief, returned the bag to the grateful owner — so grateful that he supplied the Cramer family with bracelets and rings free for years thereafter.

No matter how famous or well-known Cramer became, he never forgot the times in his own youth when his family did not have money, so each year before Thanksgiving and Christmas, his wife would buy several bags of groceries and load them into the family’s 1937 Chevrolet pickup truck. Then, Doc and daughter Joan drove to folks in town having a tough go of it. Obeying her father’s instructions, Joan would go to each house and drop off the groceries on the front porch, never knocking or ringing the bell, and from there they would go to the next needy family until their rounds were complete.

In 1939, it was thought that the Sox might finally overtake the Yankees and win the American League pennant, a hope fostered greatly by the emergence of Ted Williams. No one had to tell Williams how great he was, but on one occasion Doc took exception to the rookie’s cockiness and threw a punch at him in a vain attempt to inject him with humility. As a seasoned veteran, Doc could be expected to replicate his usual production, and if the pitching held and this Williams fellow fulfilled his hype, pennant fever would embrace the Hub.

Unfortunately, Doc began the season feebly, swatting away at virtually everything without success, and until mid-May his batting average hovered below .200. Exhibiting his frustration, he attempted to attain superhuman feats in the field, throwing himself into the center-field screen in a vain attempt to snare a Hank Greenberg drive on May 4, and then days later performing a somersault in catching a “fierce liner” off the bat of Rudy York.

Finally, in a game against the Senators on May 14, he went 3-for-7 at the plate, raising his average to .213, thereafter becoming the Doc Cramer of old, with multi-hit games following swiftly after the breakthrough. By the end of the month, he had raised his average close to .300, but by then manager Joe Cronin had taken him out of his customary leadoff spot, supplanting him with a slugging young second baseman named Bobby Doerr.  

Cramer was never a prolific base stealer despite being highly-regarded as a swift runner in the outfield. Some have wondered why Doc did not steal more, although catchers threw him out frequently (he stole 62 bases but was caught 73 times). He was well-known as a singles hitter; one also wonders if he often did not try to go for the double and held up at first instead. During the remainder of the summer, Doc had his typical year: strong defense, swift running in the outfield (but woeful in consummating steals), plenty of hits, but no home runs. The Boston Globe’s Mel Webb credited him with saving five runs by himself in a game against the Yankees on September 7, and he stoically stayed in a game against St. Louis on September 19 after he tripled home teammate Red Nonnenkamp. On the latter occasion, the Browns’ Johnny Berardino had thrown the ball from the outfield to his third baseman but inadvertently hit Doc, who was, in the words of sportswriter Gerry Moore, “so stunned from the blow on the head he was unable to get up and score himself when the ball caromed clear to the grandstand wall off the Cramer cranium.”

Yet it was a game against Detroit on the second of June, which seemed to exemplify Doc’s year, and indeed his entire career, in a microcosm. In an 8-5 loss, Doc went a perfect 5-for-5 at the plate, a pretty rare feat, and yet the next day’s Sox headline in the Globe lauded the team’s manager/shortstop, trumpeting the fact that CRONIN POLES 2. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Doc got no respect, and his singles hitting paled in the face of power hitting every time.

Although the Yankees pulled away from the Red Sox and clinched the pennant in September, Cramer continued to play hard in what became, at best, a race for second place. His devotion paid off as he finished the season with a .311 average, a truly impressive statistic given his glacial start at the plate.

As the threat of World War II increased the Sox gathered for the ’40 campaign, and Doc batted .303, but the winds had shifted at Fenway, with the advent of another pretty slick outfielder named Dom DiMaggio. Fenway has always been friendly to power hitters but less enamored of singles hitters, and as he grew older, the home park became less tolerant of Doc’s style.

Cramer loved Boston and wanted to keep playing there, but after 1940 the Red Sox traded him to the Washington Senators for Gee Walker. Doc always felt that Cronin traded him out of spite, as the two strong personalities never got on. The same day, the Red Sox packaged Walker with pitcher Jim Bagby and catcher Gene Desautels in a deal with the Cleveland Indians for catcher Frank Pytlak, infielder Odell Hale, and pitcher Joe Dobson.   Initially the trade seemed to work out a bit better for the Indians as Bagby won 17 games for them in 1942 and 1943, but Dobson proved to be a very good pickup for the Sox, for whom he won more than 100 games through 1950.

Without the luxury of batting in the same lineup with Williams, Foxx, and Doerr, Cramer saw his offensive levels drop off and he never hit over .300 again (he did hit .300 on the nose in 1943). Although many ballplayers joined the armed forces in World War II and the talent pool was diluted significantly during the war years, Cramer, by now in his late 30s, did not really capitalize on this phenomenon and he never made the All-Star Game after the trade. 

Cramer’s stay in Washington lasted only one year and he hated every minute of his time there, preferring to play in Boston. Although Cramer had led the American League in hits the year before the trade, as a Senator in 1941, he had 20 fewer hits in one less at-bat and his average dropped from .303 with Boston in 1940 to .273 in Washington. In the offseason, the Senators traded Cramer and Jimmy Bloodworth to Detroit for Frank Croucher and Bruce Campbell. Campbell had been a good hitter in the ’30s with more power than Cramer, but he played for the Senators only in 1942 and did not play again. 

With the Tigers, Cramer experienced more frustration at the plate in 1942, batting only .263. But he rebounded nicely the next year with an even .300 mark. He hit well in 1944, too, tallying up a .292 average. And that year Paul Richards joined the Tigers in 1943 to be reunited with Cramer, and they had a much longer run as teammates than the first time as they played together with the Tigers for the next four years. 

Having played for a World Series team early in his career, Doc received one last opportunity to play in another Fall Classic in 1945 when the Tigers won the last crown of the war years. During the regular season, Doc continued to range center field while batting .275, even managing to swat six home runs, turning 40 years old in July. In the World Series against the Cubs, Doc got much more of an opportunity to play than his first time, playing in all seven games, batting a lofty .379 with 11 hits, and even stealing a base as the Tigers bested the Cubs.

In 1946 and 1947, Doc played sparingly, and in 1948, he rounded out his playing days with no hits in four at-bats, although he did walk three times. He closed the book on his career with a .296 batting average and 2,705 hits, only 37 of them being home runs. He had two 6-for-6 games at the plate during his career. He coached for the Tigers in 1948 and then joined his best friend, Paul Richards, who was managing in Triple-A and hired Cramer as player-coach with Buffalo and Seattle.  When Richards became manager of the Chicago White Sox in 1951, Cramer joined him as a coach, helping to tutor Nellie Fox and a young Latin Star, Minnie Minoso. 

After ’53, Cramer left major-league baseball, spending most of the rest of his life as a carpenter; he even built his own house in Manahawkin. He enjoyed watching baseball and tried each year to attend a Phillies game. He also enjoyed attending as many old-timers games as he enjoyed meeting up with old acquaintances, and also stayed in touch regularly with Hank Greenberg, Lou Finney, Paul Richards, Pinky Higgins, Rudy York (who often donated cocker spaniel puppies to the family), and Ted Williams. He always had mixed feelings about the Splendid Splinter, believing that the influence that his old friend Ted exerted over the Veterans Committee kept him out of the Hall of Fame.

A very popular and humble man, he constantly had old ballplayers like Jimmie Foxx over to his house. Babe Ruth was a frequent guest of the Cramers and the Babe often carried a flask of alcohol with him in his shirt pocket. Once Doc asked him to visit a young local boy who had recently lost a leg, and Ruth drove over with Cramer to visit the thrilled youngster. 

Doc Cramer died on September 9, 1990, after honoring 12 mailed requests for his autograph, in his beloved Manahawkin, where a street is named after him today.

Sources

Interviews with Joan Cramer, March 8 and April 17, 2008. Letter from Joan Cramer dated May 9, 2008.

Boston Globe

National Baseball Hall of Fame Doc Cramer file, reviewed March 7, 2008. The first meeting with Perkins is noted in an unidentified article by Harry Edwards.

Golenbock, Peter, Fenway, An Unexpurgated History of the Boston Red Sox, Peter Golenbock (orig. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Son’s, 1992, paperback reprint, North Attleboro, Massachusetts: Covered Bridge Press, p. 81.) The author thanks Peter Golenbock for sharing his time with him to talk about Cramer and giving his permission to use stories about Cramer from Fenway.

The fight between Williams and Cramer was related to the author by Richard A. Johnson, who has revealed the incident previously in his Red Sox Century, co-written with Glenn Stout.

In 1929, the Crusaders reeled off 20 wins in a row. It’s not surprising that scouts flocked to watch the team. The 20th consecutive win was on June 11, 1929, and Desautels hit two triples in the game and stole a base. The Crusaders finished the year with a 28-2 record. They’d been 19-3 in 1928 and were 17-3-1 in 1930, winning the Eastern Championship each of the three seasons. When “Red” Desautels was inducted into the Holy Cross Varsity Club Hall of Fame in 1981, he was celebrated as the best catcher in Holy Cross history. His batting average increased each year, from .368 to .423 to .484. It was Detroit Tigers scout Jean Dubuc who signed Desautels.

Eugene Abraham Desautels was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on June 13, 1907, to Victor William “Willie” Desautels and Mary “Dollie” Willette. Willie was born in Quebec and moved to the Quinebaug Village section of Dudley, Massachusetts by 1890. Dudley, a town located 18 miles south of Worcester on the Connecticut border, attracted many French-Canadians to work in its textile mills. Willie (1877-1967) worked as a laborer and later was foreman in a satinet mill (satinet is a faux satin made mostly from cotton). Dollie, also of French Canadian descent, was born in Massachusetts around 1880. She and Willie, who were married at age 16 and 19 respectively, had six children together, four boys, Ernest William (b. 1898), Alfred Loyd (b. 1900), Armand (b. 1903), Eugene and two daughters, Pearl A. (b. about 1902) and Viola L. (b. about 1912). Sadly, Dollie died at an early age, sometime between 1912 and 1918.

Gene had played baseball by the age of six. His brother Fred wanted to be a pitcher and drafted Gene to catch for him; Gene never had a chance to try another position. By age 14 he was helping out as batting practice catcher for Rockdale in the Blackstone Valley League. The team played three games a week, and during a game against East Douglas (the team featured a young Hank Greenberg at the time), a dispute arose and umpire Bill Summers tossed out Rockdale’s catcher. “You can’t do that!” yelled the manager. “All I have left is a three-dollar catcher.” The three bucks was what Gene took home. Summers said he didn’t “give a damn if he was a 10-cent catcher.” And Gene found himself in the game. Jack Barry was at the game and he liked what he saw. Gene had entered a vocational school, planning to specialize in textile dyes, but Barry talked him into going to high school and later to Holy Cross. [1]

After graduating with his bachelor of philosophy degree in June 1930, “Red” Desautels joined the Tigers and made his major-league debut in the second game of a June 22, 1930, doubleheader against the Red Sox. He was 0-for-1 at the plate, with a successful sacrifice, in a game called after six innings due to Boston’s Sunday closing law that required games to be over by 6 p.m.   The Tigers took both games. Desautels collected his first hit on the 24^th off Red Sox righty Hod Lisenbee. Ray Hayworth, Detroit’s main man behind the plate, played in only 77 games that year. Pinky Hargrave was the most-used reserve backstop, with 55 games, followed by Desautels who appeared in 42 games. Gene’s batting was anemic, however, just .190, with nine RBIs to his credit.

That was the story throughout his career. Except for his 1938 season with the Red Sox, Desautels was valued much more for his catching talents and work with the pitchers than for his bat.

Years later, Joe Cronin, the former Red Sox manager but by then president of the American League, was asked in testimony before the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee if he’d even seen a player win an argument with an umpire. Yes, he told the senators: “Gene Desautels, then a rookie catcher with Detroit, was a cocky young fellow and was giving umpire Cal Hubbard a hard time. On a play at second, Desautels slid in and Hubbard called him out. I think Hubbard was hoping Desautels would complain so he could throw him out of the game, too. Desautels said sweetly, ‘You can’t call me out.’ Hubbard blustered, ‘Oh, no? Why not?’ ‘Because I’m sitting on the ball.'”   [2]

Come 1931, Desautels dropped down a notch and became the fourth catcher on the Tigers depth chart. Ray Hayworth remained No. 1, with the recently added Johnny Grabowski and Wally Schang sharing backup roles. Gene was seen (in the Washington Post) as “a clever youngster who is not any too effective with the stick.” Consequently, he played most of the year for Columbus of the American Association and got some work in; he hit .273 in 275 at-bats, driving in 32 runs. Gene got into three September games with the big-league club, managing just one single in 11 at-bats.

He played in Detroit for the next two years, again in a reserve role sharing duties with Muddy Ruel in 1932 with Hayworth playing a little more than half the games. Gene was with the ballclub but sat on the bench for a full 100 games before getting his first start. Desautels got the nod as second-string catcher for 1933, but his hitting held him back from seeing more work. He caught in 30 games in 1933, a couple more than Johnny Pasek. The stick work was still problematic; he hit .236 in 1932 but only .143 in 1933, and drove in but six runs in the two years combined. Though he was not used as much as he would have liked, Desautels told interviewer Brent Kelley that manager Bucky Harris “did more for me than anyone.”

When Mickey Cochrane took over as catcher-manager for the Tigers in 1934, Hayworth dropped to second string, and it was back to the American Association for Desautels. He was optioned to Toledo in early April. He spent the full year catching for the Mud Hens and fared better against American Association pitching, hitting .268. Then he headed west, sold to Hollywood on November 28, 1934. He got in a full year of work with the Hollywood Stars in 1935. Manager Frank Shellenback had quite a team, with Bobby Doerr, George Myatt, Vince DiMaggio, and more. And Gene found himself a Hollywood Star on the silver screen, too. The final scene in the 1935 motion picture Alibi Ike was shot at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, starring Joe E. Brown and Olivia DeHavilland, but included more than a dozen ballplayers including Desautels. In regular season action, Desautels had 426 at-bats and showed some power with six home runs, batting .265. When the Coast League franchise Stars moved to San Diego and became the Padres in 1936, Desautels really picked it up, hitting at a .319 clip in 480 at-bats over 148 games. 

Eddie Collins of the Red Sox had a good relationship with owner Bill Lane of the Padres. On September 4, 1936, the Boston Red Sox purchased Desautels for 1937 delivery. Joining Gene from San Diego on the 1937 Red Sox roster was Padres second baseman Bobby Doerr. Collins kept in close touch with Desautels, who lived in San Diego the winter of 1936-37. Collins had seen Ted Williams with the Padres and was immediately impressed, getting a handshake agreement that Lane would offer him the chance to sign Williams when the time came. Desautels wrote Williams’ biographer Michael Seidel that Collins had called him and asked him to “keep tabs on Williams.” Ted asked Desautels to pitch to him throughout the winter months after the 1936 season and Gene did, “by the hour that winter … willing enough but not at the pace Williams desired.” He later advised Collins to purchase the option on Ted. 

A few days before the 1937 season opened, Gene Desautels returned to Worcester and saw his Red Sox shut out the Holy Cross Crusaders, 5-0. After Rick Ferrell was traded to the Senators in June, Desautels became Boston’s first-string catcher, backed up by Moe Berg. He played in close to two-thirds of the games and batted .243. He drove in 27 runs. The Sox finished in fifth place.

Desautels moved and took up residence in Quinebaug, Connecticut. He enjoyed playing for New England’s major-league team. In 1938, with Johnny Peacock as his backup, Gene did even better, and he surprised his manager; before the 1938 season Cronin said, “We’re a little weak in catching. Gene Desautels, he’s a corking receiver, and a grand boy, but he doesn’t hit much.” Wearing number 2 now that Rick Ferrell had been traded to Washington, Gene had his best season, batting .291, driving in 48 runs and even hitting his first two major-league home runs. The first came on April 26 in Washington, an inside-the-park blast to Griffith Stadium’s deep center field off former Red Sox pitcher Pete Appleton (previously known as Pete Jablonowski), and the second was hit on May 14 off knuckleballer Dutch Leonard, also of the Washington Senators. 

There was an unusual incident that occurred in either 1937 or 1938, when Desautels may have helped save Joe Cronin’s life – or Eric McNair’s! Peter Golenbock quoted a player who preferred to remain anonymous as saying that he and Desautels were sitting in the Book Cadillac Hotel and heard a noise outside their seventh- or eighth-floor window. It was Eric McNair outside on the ledge. He was “stiff as a hoot owl. And he had a gun in his hand.” He told the two ballplayers, “I’m going to kill Cronin.” It took them about 45 minutes, but they eventually talked McNair back inside. “That ledge wasn’t very wide,” Desautels told Golenbock, “and we were afraid he might fall off and kill himself, because he had been drinking. If he had slipped, he would have been dead.” [3]

Desautels was never a star backstop. The Red Sox simply lacked great catchers in these days. Entering 1939, Harry Ferguson of United Press offered the assessment that “Gene Desautels and John Peacock make up an adequate but not brilliant catching staff.” The left-handed-hitting Peacock pushed his way into a platoon situation, garnering 274 at-bats compared to Gene’s 226. Peacock hit .277 and Desautels .243, matching his 1937 mark and distinctly down from the .291 he’d hit in ’38. Gene started the season dismally, hitting well under .200 for the first couple of months, but was considered a solid defensive catcher in whom the pitchers had confidence.

A July 2 game against the Yankees showed some of his grit. In the first inning of the day’s doubleheader, Tommy Henrich collided at home plate and knocked Gene cold – but he held onto the ball and Henrich was out.

Jack Malaney of the Boston Post paid Gene a real tribute in the August 17, 1939, Sporting News, noting that “Gene Desautels caught all of the 12 victories Lefty Grove had pitched without ever once shaking off his catcher.” Gene came up with a “lame arm” in mid-August, though, and had to take a few days off for treatment.

Looking back on Red’s tenure with the team over his first three seasons, owner Tom Yawkey nodded in his direction while sitting in the stands in Sarasota in March 1940 and said, “There’s a man who does not get the credit that belongs to him. Gene may not hit as hard as some other catchers you could name, but for my money there is nothing wrong with his catching. He is one of those steady workmen who does everything easily and gracefully, with the result that not too much attention is paid him.” [4] Joe Cronin agreed, calling Gene “the most underrated catcher in the American League.” Desautels worked hard, too, and worked “as hard and as faithfully as if he were a rookie trying to earn a job,” the newspaper said. 

Desautels caught one more year for the Red Sox, in 1940, with both he and Johnny Peacock beating back a challenge for the catcher’s slot from George Lacy of Minneapolis; Gene played more than Peacock but still fell short on offense, declining further at bat, hitting just .225. Cronin was never fully satisfied with either. SABR’s Mark Armour notes that the role of catcher had become such a sinkhole for the team that Jimmie Foxx volunteered to catch to allow Lou Finney the chance to play first base. Foxx was the regular catcher for six weeks or so, and appeared in 42 games behind the plate. After the 1940 season, the Sox helped engineer a three-team trade in December that saw Desautels, Jim Bagby, and Gee Walker go to the Indians, while catcher Frankie Pytlak, Odell Hale and Joe Dobson came to Boston. The Red Sox had shipped Doc Cramer to the Washington Senators, acquiring Walker so they could package him in the deal. The Indians felt that Gene would be “every bit as good as Pytlak” as their second-string catcher. Desautels declared, “Thank goodness I won’t have to face that Bob Feller again.” He thought it was a good trade for Cleveland. Jim Bagby, in a subtle slap at Joe Cronin, said he thought that playing “under different management” would benefit him. “I didn’t pitch my own game in Boston,” he said. 

The Washington Post‘s Shirley Povich found the trade fascinating, but didn’t think the Red Sox improved themselves any. It was Walker who was the key to the deal for the Indians, he wrote. “Desautels and Bagby scarcely figure to bolster the Cleveland club. … .Desautels is a nice sort of lad, but he has been the chief reason why the Boston catching staff was never rated highly and why, finally, Jimmy Foxx was called behind the bat last season. The Indians will hardly use Desautels much.”   The Indians had Rollie Hemsley as their first-string catcher but he was showing signs of self-limitation, both in terms of age and alcohol. In early January, the Tribe picked up George Susce as a backup, but Desautels got into 66 ballgames and was kept busy. He was a hard worker who generally got good marks for his catching, but really struggled with his hitting. To his credit, he kept trying. Arch Ward led a March 1941 column in the Chicago Tribune by noting that, despite 12 years in baseball, he “still asks other players to help him improve his hitting.” 

It wasn’t long before Desautels began to make a good impression on the field. Bill Cunningham wrote a May 21 column in the Washington Post praising Hemsley (“one of the most notorious bottlemen in all baseball”) for his success with sobriety, and added, “Desautels … seems ideal as Hemsley’s understudy and Cleveland is delighted with him.” There were very few outstanding games, though. On July 5, he was 2-for-4 and drove in two. He had his third and last big league home run on May 14 at Yankee Stadium off future Hall of Famer Red Ruffing. By year’s end, though, Gene had pretty much matched his 1940 totals – 17 RBIs but a lower average, just .201. There was one embarrassing moment for him on July 26, at Fenway Park, when he looked to have singled to right field but Lou Finney played the ball so quickly that he threw out Gene before he reached first base.

After the season, Cincinnati purchased Hemsley from Cleveland. The Indians planned to count on prospect Otto Denning, with Desautels as a backup. Shirley Povich wrote that the Indians could carry Desautels “because he is a good catcher.” He improved his average considerably in 1942, but didn’t get nearly as much work as had been planned due to a fractured fibula – a broken leg – suffered in a collision while blocking the plate against Detroit’s Billy Hitchcock on May 10. He was expected to be out about six weeks, and the Indians called up Jim Hegan. It was nearly 10 weeks, though, before Desautels returned, catching two innings of a game and singling. Hegan replaced him as a runner and saw the game through to the 12th inning, when Hegan singled in the winning run.   In the first game of two on August 11, Gene set a major league record for the longest game played in which a catcher had neither a putout nor an assist – a 14-inning game that ended in a 0-0 tie. Al Milnar had a no-hitter through 8 2/3 innings until Roger Cramer broke up his bid – but he didn’t strike out even one batter all game long. In December, the Indians acquired Buddy Rosar from the Yankees, presumably to make him the first string catcher. However, manager Lou Boudreau claimed in April 1943 that Rosar would be backing up Desautels. Denning had become a first baseman, and Hegan had entered the Coast Guard. In fact, Rosar earned his way and played most of the games, hitting .283 while Desautels finished the season with his usual 60-some games, this year batting just .205.

At the end of the season, Desautels was ordered to report for induction into the United States Army on January 5, 1944. Gene and his wife, Josephine Connolly of Detroit, had two children at the time (a third was born later), and he was working in the offseason at the Heywood-Schuster Shoe Company in Douglas, Massachusetts, but there was a war on. He was living in Dudley, near Douglas, at the time. When due to report, he received a deferment for a month, but made a move of his own and enlisted in the Marines on February 29. He reported to the Parris Island training center in South Carolina – and by August was reported the leading hitter on the Parris Island baseball team. During the winter months, PFC Desautels was named basketball coach of the Parris Island Marines team. He managed the baseball team for two summers – his first time as a manager.

Desautels was discharged from the Marines on July 28, 1945, and was clearly in the best of shape; he was back in the game for the Indians just a week later, playing the second game of their August 5 doubleheader. He didn’t play much the rest of the season, though, getting in just nine at-bats and only one hit. In mid-September, not even waiting until season’s end, the Indians placed him on waivers and he was claimed by the Philadelphia Athletics on September 17.

Athletics manager Connie Mack, slated Buddy Rosar, who had been traded from Cleveland before Desautels, as Philadelphia’s top catcher, with Jim Pruett (who’d hit .303 with Toronto in 1945) as second. Gene was third. On March 29, though, the situation brightened as Mack sold Pruett to the Giants and said he’d go with just Rosar and Desautels. This proved to be the case, though the team results weren’t at all favorable – the Athletics finished last, 55 games behind the Red Sox. Gene hit .215 in his last season of major-league ball, driving in 13 more runs. One of them was a nice one to remember in the years ahead – a bases-loaded single he hit in the bottom of the ninth to win a 1-0 game in Philadelphia on August 29 against the Indians. He was given his unconditional release by the Athletics during the offseason.

Desautels had performed one last service as a major leaguer, though. He was Philadelphia’s “player rep” to a meeting held in Chicago on July 29, 1946. The players recommended the implementation of a pension plan, a minimum salary, provisions for players to receive a percentage of money during a waiver deal or trade, a provision for spring training per diems payments, and a grievance committee – all in all, an early step on the road to collective bargaining between an organized players’ group and owners.

Desautels caught for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1947, but could only hit .188 against International League pitching, in 208 at-bats. He did hit five home runs, but it was not a good showing. That was his last year as a player, though he assigned himself 50 times at bat in 16 games while manager of the Class A Williamsport Tigers of the Eastern League. He was appointed Williamsport’s manager in December 1947 and served for the 1948 and 1949 seasons. At the end of 1949, Gene swapped positions with Jack Tighe, who’d managed the Class A Flint, Michigan, Tigers farm club – Tighe taking over Williamsport and Desautels taking over Flint. The area appealed to him and he made Flint his residence until his death in 1994, even though he managed the Flint ballclub just the 1950 season. In December, he was named manager of the Double A Little Rock Travelers and worked in Arkansas for one season, 1951, leading the team to its first Southern Association pennant in nine years.

He moved on to manage the Indianapolis Indians of the American Association in 1952, at the request of Indians GM Hank Greenberg. It was not a good season for Indianapolis, which finished sixth and drew poorly. Gene put himself in one game. Gene was named to his fifth club in five years, when hired on November 1 to skipper the Sacramento Solons in the Pacific Coast League for 1953. It had been a last-place team under Joe Gordon, who became a scout for the Tigers, and Gene’s first year saw the team destined to go nowhere. The team surprised at first, starting off hustling, though losing several one-run games. In the end, the Solons sank to the bottom once more. Gene did his part for the team, taking part in egg-throwing contests before a game or two, and getting into it a couple of times with umpires, but the staff had two 17-game losers and – as predicted – finished last. Discouragingly, there were few moves made to try to improve the club over the winter. Again, the 1954 team started off better than expected, and this time did well for the first month or so, but then had dropped to seventh place by July, prompting Gene to resign on July 12, 1954. One of the reasons was likely the lack of support; the July 28 Sporting News referred to the Solons as “suffering from a shortage of operating capital, leading some observers to believe a change in ownership might take place there before next year.” The way Gene put it to Brent Kelley: “They were operating on a shoestring. They couldn’t afford to buy anybody or get anybody, and that was it for managing.”

Desautels got himself a position as athletic consultant working with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint. The Holy Cross graduate used his position with the Mott Foundation to urge players to broaden themselves as individuals. “Too many players … depend too much on baseball,” he said. “So many never reach the majors and these are the ones who are not ready to meet the challenge when they reach the 35-year mark. During the last few years that I managed I urged all young players to prepare themselves for the day they were through with baseball, so they wouldn’t have to start from scratch when they reach the end of the road as active players. Many count on getting some kind of baseball job as coach, scout, or manager. However, these jobs are limited and the game is unable to care for everyone who reaches the inevitable age of ‘too old to play.’ “

The National Amateur Baseball Federation named Desautels as one of its three vice presidents. He hosted an annual tournament in Flint for several years in the late 1950s. In 1956, he invited the Red Sox’ Ted Williams and Jimmy Piersall, and the Tigers’ Charlie Maxwell to compete in a June 18 hitting contest as a benefit for the boys baseball program in Flint; Williams hit 25 drives out of Atwood Stadium.

He also helped do some scouting for the Tigers, running an area tryout camp in 1958. Gene was married early in his career but was a widower when he met Mildred Kramer, who became his second wife in 1960. He was working as school counselor at Southwestern High School in Flint, a position he held until retirement. She was a former legal secretary, retired by the time they met and, at the time of our interview, 104 years old.

Gene and Mildred enjoyed taking what they called “gypsy trips.” Mildred said they’d “just start out and go. Put the golf clubs in the back seat, and swimming suits, and away we’d go. We’d start out, nothing in mind, and just go. Especially in Canada. We liked to go across Canada. We had no time to get back. If we liked a place, we’d stay and if we didn’t, we’d move on.”

They enjoyed a number of cruises, to Scandinavia, to Japan, to Hawaii. Gene’s widow didn’t think he had a favorite team, but there was one thing he’d had enough of in baseball and that was travel by rail. “He liked the fellows he played with at each place. He got tired of riding trains, though. We went someplace and I decided we’d take the train across Canada into California. He put his foot down to that. He said, ‘I’ve had enough of that train ride in baseball.’ They practically lived on trains. That’s how they traveled. It was too much togetherness. That’s the one time he vetoed what I’d had planned.”

None of his children showed interest in baseball, nor had his first wife. Gene Junior became a health-care provider and works as a surgeon in Chico, California. His daughters, Joanne and Diane, both lived in California as well.

Gene Desautels died on November 5, 1994, in Flint. He was 87 and had enjoyed a good and productive long life. “He died of a heart attack while he was shopping at the city market,” his widow explained. “He was paying for something – buying, I think, a cauliflower – and he just dropped over. That was it.”

Sources

Interview with Mildred Desautels on May 26, 2007.

Drohan, John. “Desautels Rates High With Cronin” Unidentified article found in the Desautels player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. May 17, 1940.

Farrrington, Dick. “Desautels Began Catching at 12 for Brother; Ump’s Thumb Gave Him Semi-Pro Chance,” The Sporting News, August 4, 1938.

Golenbock, Peter. Red Sox Nation. (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2005)

Kelley, Brent. “Gene Desautels”, Sports Collectors Digest, January 25, 1991.

Unidentified article by McAuley found in the Desautels player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. February 23, 1941.

Thanks to Rod Nelson, Dick Daly, Francis Kinlaw, and James Wrobel / Holy Cross.

Born George Emerson Dickman on November 12, 1914 to George Emerson Dickman Sr. and Mary (Hagen) Dickman, Emerson came from Irish and German stock. A younger sister, Joan, completed the family. The elder George was connected with Fox Films, selling its movies to theaters. Fred Lieb, who profiled Dickman in The Sporting News, wrote that he started pitching in grammar school and continued at Nichols Prep School in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. He also took up football and hockey there. Lieb also compared Emerson’s looks to those of Robert Taylor, a Hollywood leading man of the day. This earned him some ribbing from the bench jockeys of the American League. In addition to team sports, Dickman was also a squash player.

A childhood friend, Jack Cook, who captained the baseball team at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, recruited Dickman for the team. There, Emerson was a two-sport star and belonged to the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. During his sophomore year, he won eight games and struck out 73 as the squad won the Southern Conference championship. In the summer, Dickman pitched for the Buffalo Blue Coals, a semipro outfit that went to the National Baseball Congress tournament in Wichita. 

The New York Yankees almost signed Dickman after his junior year in 1936. Ivory hunter Paul Krichell was schmoozing with Dickman’s father in a Buffalo hotel when he received a call from Ed Barrow to drop everything, travel to Maryland, and go after Charlie “King Kong” Keller. 

The 6-foot-2, 175-pound Dickman signed instead with the Boston Red Sox after his junior season. Supposedly contenders, the 1936 Red Sox had a fractious clubhouse that proved to be too big a barrier. They were called the “Millionaires” after owner Tom Yawkey’s free spending ways. They did their share of drinking. The pitching staff didn’t get along with manager Joe Cronin, who was more offensive-minded than defensive-minded. The team craved young pitching, signing Chicago schoolboy Frank Dasso, Dartmouth’s Ted Olson, and Dickman. Dickman’s career, such as it was, was the best of the three.

Emery, as the Boston newspapers called him, was supposed to meet the team in Buffalo as their train made its way west but didn’t join them until June 16, when they started a western trip in Chicago. Dickman warmed up that first day with polymath-catcher Moe Berg. “The finest prospect I’ve seen in a long time,” enthused Berg, “He looks fine. I predict something for that fellow.” It was the first time Dickman had picked up the ball in a month. 

Lefty Grove and Wes Ferrell helped coach Herb Pennock work with the younger pitchers that year. After Dickman threw batting practice, Ferrell hustled him to the outfield, telling him that he needed to shag flies to get in shape. Ferrell started that night but failed to run out a grounder to shortstop that the Chicago White Sox’ Luke Appling airmailed wide of the bag at first. “Don’t take that as an example, Dick,” some Sox said to the young hurler.

Dickman stuck with the team for the road trip. Farm director Billy Evans felt it would be a good experience for him to get into a game before being assigned to a minor-league team. Dickman appeared in his first game on June 27. Wes Ferrell started against his old team in Cleveland, but the Tribe beat the Red Sox, 14-5. Neither Jack Wilson nor Rube Walberg did the job in relief, and Cronin gave the ball to Dickman to pitch the eighth. He struck out two, walked one, gave up two hits, threw a wild pitch, and gave up two runs, one earned. It proved to be his only appearance until 1938. The next day, there was a small Buffalo contingent at the game and they presented Dickman and Cleveland’s Frank Pytlak (another native of their city) with gifts.

As Evans had intended, Dickman spent some time traveling with the big club and working with pitching coach Pennock before being sent to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, of the Class B Piedmont League. At Rocky Mount, the tall, wiry right-hander pitched 63 innings in nine games, going 5-0 with a 1.86 ERA. In 1937, he was assigned to Little Rock of the Class A Southern Association. He went 16-8 with a 4.04 ERA for Doc Prothro’s Travelers and helped them to the Southern Association championship before wrenching his back.

Dickman spent the next 3½ years with Boston, mainly in the bullpen. In 1938, he was able to crack the rotation in July after some relief success. He appeared in 32 games, starting 11, and posted a 5-5 record. The lifetime .145 batter also hit his only career home run, off Chubby Dean in Philadelphia on July 2. He finished the season with a 5.28 ERA. He threw his one and only career shutout on July 25, a 4-0 win over the Indians in the first game of a Fenway doubleheader.

Dickman’s best year was 1939, when he appeared in 48 games, all but one in relief, and had five saves and an 8-3 record. Though saves were not officially tracked in those days, his five would have been good enough to rank sixth in the American League. (The Yankees’ Johnny Murphy led with 19 and Dickman’s bullpen mate, veteran Joe Heving, had seven.) Dickman had an ERA of 4.43; which was pretty good keeping in mind that Fenway was his home park. He also had career highs in wins, IP, appearances, strikeouts, and a career-low ERA

Highlights of Emerson’s 1939 season included a win against the Yankees on July 7. He entered the game in the sixth with the game 3-3 and runners on second and third. Dickman intentionally walked King Kong Keller to load the bases, then struck out the next two batters to retire the side. This started a five-game sweep of the Yanks that brought the Bosox within striking distance of the New Yorkers (6 ½ games.) Dickman garnered another win with another long relief stint in the series.

He had a win against Cleveland on July 15. After the Tribe knocked Fritz Ostermueller out of the box in the fifth, Dickman held them scoreless the rest of the way. This extended the Bosox winning streak to eight games, and they eventually extended it to ten. Dickman also had a game in St. Louis against the Browns where he replaced Jack Wade in the second and went 7 2/3 innings to get the win. They don’t use relievers like that 70 years later!

Dickman started 1940 in the rotation, but lasted only a month before returning to bullpen duty. He appeared in 35 games (8-6, with three saves). That year, his ERA crept over 6.00. He saw little duty in 1941, getting into only nine games (three starts), and posting a 1-1 record. His final major-league appearance was on June 26, 1941. Emerson gave up a triple to Roy Weatherly – the two had debuted in the very same game in 1936 – and let him score on a wild pitch in the last inning of an 11-8 Red Sox loss to Cleveland. Dickman’s major-league career had lasted one day less than five years. After that game he was assigned to Louisville. Nevertheless, 1941 was not a bad year for him. He met his future wife, a cover girl named Connie Joannes. He was in Valdosta, Georgia, en route to Sarasota for spring training with a friend from home, Bill Farnsworth. Bill knew a woman who was there with Connie. They were either shooting a Lucky Strike ad or on a nationwide tour for Coty perfume. Bill set up Em and Connie. Dickman married the 19-year-old New Jerseyite in the fall. (Incidentally, Farnsworth went on to marry Alan Ladd’s ex-wife.)

Dickman might have made it back to the majors. His stats weren’t great, but he was hardly over the hill at 27 when the attacking Japanese navy sounded the tocsin of war at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

On January 19, 1942, just six weeks after the attack, Dickman enlisted in the Naval Reserve.  Dickman started his naval career as a storekeeper third class. He spent most of the war at King’s Point, New York, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy but was recruited by Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Powers, erstwhile sports editor of the New York Daily News to serve along with some other athletes in the Morale and Athletics Department which Powers commanded. Dickman earned his commission as an ensign and rose to the rank of lieutenant during the war. 

Dickman was a physical training instructor, keeping cadets fit, he said, with “Gene Tunney tactics.”  He also coached baseball at the academy. It was a nine to five life. He’d leave their apartment in nearby Great Neck and head to the academy. Connie would go into New York City for modeling assignments. They couple had two sons (Emerson and Robert) during the war. Before the war ended, he was transferred to Hawaii for a period of time.

Dickman told a reporter from The Sporting News that he wanted to get into advertising after the war. In a feature article on his wife, he told the writer that he wanted to open a restaurant or a sporting goods store. What he didn’t do was return to professional baseball, but he did play semipro ball in the New York City area. 

Dickman coached baseball at Princeton from 1949 to 1951. The Tigers won the Eastern Intercontinental Baseball League all three years. They made their only appearance in the College World Series in 1951 before losing to USC and Tennessee. Dave Sisler was among Dickman’s players and thought that coaching was more of an avocation than a job for the former pitcher. 

Dickman left after the 1951 season to concentrate on his career as a radio/TV salesman; first at Capehart-Farnsworth, then at Stromberg-Carlson; both manufacturers of the day. Connie continued to model for household products after the war; brands such as Ipana toothpaste, Resistab cold tablets, and Super Starlac powdered milk. She was later the “Avon lady” for many years. The couple had a daughter, also named Connie, during the 1950s.

Emerson’s wife described him as a friendly man, which was an asset for his career in sales. Yet he had a sense of modesty and wouldn’t bring up his baseball career unless someone else brought it up first.

Dickman took interest in his kids playing sports. Second son Robert played in the Astros’ minor league system as a catcher despite suffering from polio as a child. Dickman also golfed after his career and helped Fred Corcoran set up tournaments for the PGA. His last job was with the Yankees. He was a group and season sales representative from 1975 until he retired in 1980.  

Dickman died on April 27, 1981, at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He is buried in George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, New Jersey. In 1996 he was inducted into the Washington and Lee University Athletic Hall of Fame.

Sources

Interview with Dave Sisler on January 9, 2008.

Interview with Emerson Dickman III on May 9, 2008.

Interview with Connie Brescia on May 10, 2008.

Baseball-Reference.com

Ladies Home Journal, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Post,

Hartford Courant, New York Daily News, New York Times, The Sporting News

Stout, Glenn, and Richard A. Johnson, Red Sox Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000)

Special thanks to Rod Nelson.

Born in the city of Los Angeles on April 7, 1918, Robert Pershing Doerr was one of the four Sox from the West Coast who starred in the 1940s — Williams from San Diego, Doerr from Los Angeles, Dom DiMaggio from San Francisco, and Johnny Pesky from Portland, Oregon. Doerr was born to Harold and Frances Doerr. His father worked for the telephone company, rising to become a foreman in the cable department, a position he held through the Depression. The Doerrs had three children — Hal, the eldest by five years, Bobby, and a younger sister Dorothy, who was three years younger than Bobby. Doerr told interviewer Maury Brown, “If she’d have been a boy, she’d have been a professional. She was a good athlete.”2

Baseball came early. “We lived near a playground that had four baseball diamonds on it and when I got to be 11, 12 years old, I was always over at the ballpark practicing or playing or doing something pertaining to baseball. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was bouncing a rubber ball off the steps of my front porch at home.”3  Manchester Playground attracted a number of kids from the area[,] and a surprising number of them went on to play pro ball.  Bobby’s American Legion team, the Leonard Wood Post, boasted quite a team. The infield alone boasted George McDonald at first base (11 of his 18 seasons were with the PCL San Diego Padres), Bobby Doerr at second base (14 seasons with the Red Sox), Mickey Owen at shortstop (13 seasons in the major leagues), and Steve Mesner at third (six seasons in the National League.)  That was quite a group of 14-year-olds.

Bobby’s older brother Hal played professionally as well, a catcher in the Pacific Coast League from 1932-1936. It was Doerr’s father who helped bring about Owen’s transition from shortstop to catcher in the winter of 1933. The team they put together for some wintertime ball didn’t have a catcher so Harold Doerr urged Owen to give it a try. Mr. Doerr helped out in other ways, too. During these miserable economic times, rather than lay people off, the telephone company reduced many people’s hours to three days a week – which at least provided some income. “It was just Depression days,” Bobby explained. “Sometimes he would buy some baseball shoes for some of the kids, or a glove. Things were tough. Kids couldn’t afford to get it themselves, and he had a job… He tried to help when he could from time to time; some of those kids were even having a hard time having meals at home.”

Wintertime play was important– unlike Legion ball, the games included people of all ages, including some players who had played minor league ball but wanted to pick up a little extra money playing semipro on the playgrounds. “So when I was 15 and 16, I got to play against pretty good professional ballplayers.”  That gave Bobby some valuable experience. It also got him noticed.

Doerr told author Cynthia Wilber that his fondest memory as a child was winning the 1932 American Legion state tournament on Catalina Island, winning a regional tournament in Ogden, Utah, then coming within a game in Omaha, Nebraska of playing for the national title in Manchester, New Hampshire.4

Bobby played high school ball for two years at Fremont High, in 1933 and the first part of 1934, but he’d been working out some with the Hollywood Sheiks and they offered to sign both him and George McDonald.5 Both were 16 at the time, and in high school. Bill Lane was the owner of the ballclub and Oscar Vitt was the Sheiks’ manager. Hal was playing for the Portland Beavers at the time. The Sheiks offered an ironclad two-year contract guaranteeing they would not send Bobby out. Bobby’s father let him sign, “but I had to promise that I’d go back to high school in the wintertime and get my high school diploma.” He did. Bobby understands that more professional ballplayers came out of Fremont High than any other high school in the country.

Doerr played 67 games for Hollywood in 1934, batting .259, all but six of the 16-year-old’s 52 hits being singles. In 1935, Bobby acknowledges he “had a pretty good year” – he hit for a .317 average and added some power, hitting 22 doubles, eight triples, and four home runs. He drove in 74 runs, playing a very full 172-game season.

That winter, the Red Sox purchased an option on the contracts of both Doerr and teammate George Myatt, paying a reported $75,000. Bill Lane moved the Hollywood team to San Diego early in 1936, where they were renamed the San Diego Padres. In July, Eddie Collins came to look over the pair while the Padres were playing in Portland and took Doerr’s contract but declined Myatt. Collins also noticed a young player named Ted Williams and shook hands on the right to purchase Williams at a later time. Doerr improved again in his third year in the Coast League, batting .342 with 37 doubles and 12 triples, though just two home runs. He led the league with 238 hits and scored an even 100 runs.

Doerr was 18 years old when he headed east for his first spring training with the Red Sox, traveling across the country to Sarasota, Florida, with Mel Almada. Doerr made the team in 1937, batting leadoff on Opening Day and going 3-for-5. He had won the starting job and held it until he was beaned by Washington’s Ed Linke on April 26; the ball hit him over the left ear and bounded over to the Red Sox dugout. In Wilber’s book, Doerr says, “It didn’t knock me out, but I was out of the lineup for a few days and Eric McNair got back in. He was playing good ball, so I didn’t play too much that first couple of months. The last month of the season I got back in and I played pretty well for the rest of the year.”6   Eric McNair played most of the games at second but by season’s end, Bobby had accumulated 147 at-bats in 55 games.

Though he batted just .224, he took over second base fulltime beginning in 1938. The right-hand hitting Doerr (5-feet-11, 175 pounds) batted .289 in 1938, with 80 RBIs, playing in 145 games. He led the league in sacrifice hits with 22. Defensively, he helped turn a league-leading 118 double plays. Only once more did he hit less than .270 – he batted .258 in 1947, driving in 95 runs.

Doerr explained to Wilber, “I never did work in the off-season, and I never did play winter ball or anything else. I think it was good for me to get away after a full season….In those days, I don’t think anyone ever got too complacent. Even after I played ten years of ball, I still felt like I had to play well or somebody might take my place. They had plenty of players in the minor leagues who were good enough to come up and take your job, and I think that kept us going all of the time. I hustled and put that extra effort in all of the time.”7

In 1939, he upped his average to .318 and added some power, more than doubling his home run total with 12 round-trippers. Though his average slipped a bit in 1940 (to .291), he became a more productive hitter, driving in 105 runs, with 37 doubles, 10 triples, and 22 home runs. Again, he led the league in double plays, again turning 118 of them. His 401 putouts also led the AL.

Doerr was named to the first of nine American League All-Star teams in 1941; he played in eight games, starting five of them, and his three-run home run in the bottom of the second inning of the 1943 game, off Mort Cooper, made all the difference in the 5-3 AL win.

Though his RBI total dropped to 93 in 1941, he bumped it back up to 102 the following year, the second of six seasons he drove in more than 100 runs. He led the league in fielding average, too. Come 1943, he played in every Red Sox game all year long (and the All-Star Game), and though his RBI total slipped to 75 – a function of greatly weakened team offense – Doerr excelled on defense, leading the American League in putouts, assists, double plays, and fielding average.

Doerr anchored the second base slot for Boston through the 1951 season, missing just one year (and one crucial month) during World War II. The month was September 1944. When the war broke out, Bobby was exempt because he and his wife Monica had a young son, Don. He’d also been rejected for a perforated eardrum. As the war rolled on, the military needed more and more men and the pressures on seemingly-healthy athletes intensified. After the 1943 season, Doerr took a wintertime defense job in Los Angeles, working at a sheet metal machine shop run by the man who had managed his old American Legion team. When he left the defense job to play the 1944 season, he received his draft orders and was told to report at the beginning of September. By the time September came around, the Red Sox were in the thick of the pennant race, just four games out of first place — and both Doerr (.325 at the time, his .528 slugging average led the league) and Hughson (18-5, 2.26 ERA) had to leave. The team couldn’t sustain those two losses and their hopes sputtered out.

Bobby’s .325 average was second in the league, just two points behind the ultimate batting champion, Lou Boudreau, who hit .327. Doerr was named AL Player of the Year by The Sporting News.

Because of the war, Doerr missed the entire 1945 season. He had made his home in Oregon and so reported for induction in the United States Army in Portland. He was first assigned to Fort Lewis and a week later reported for infantry duty at Camp Roberts. After completing the months of training, word began to circulate within his outfit that they were being prepared to ship out to Ford Ord, and then overseas for the invasion of Japan. President Truman brought the whole thing to a halt by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

After the war, Staff Sergeant Doerr changed back into his Red Sox uniform and returned to the 1946 edition of the Red Sox. He drove in 116 runs, his highest total yet – thanks to the potent Boston batting order. Bobby once again led the league in four defensive categories, the same four as in 1943: putouts, assists, double plays, and fielding percentage.

The Red Sox waltzed to the World Series, but lost to the Cardinals in seven games. Doerr led the regulars in hitting, batting .409 with nine hits in 22 Series at-bats. Babe Ruth, asked who was the MVP of the American League, said, “Doerr, and not Ted Williams, is the No. 1 player on the team.”

He averaged over 110 RBIs from 1946 through 1950, with a career-high 120 RBIs in the 1950 campaign. That last full season, he led the league a fourth time in putouts and a fourth time in fielding average. His .993 in 1948 was the Red Sox record for second basemen until Mark Loretta surpassed it with a .994 mark in the 2006 season.

Doerr hit for the cycle twice (May 17, 1944 and May 13, 1947); he is the only Red Sox player to do it more than once. In a June 8, 1950 game, he hit three homers and drove in eight runs. Despite the power demonstrated by his 223 career home runs, his fielding was at least as important. He was always exceptional on defense, more than once running off strings of over 300 chances without an error. He led the league 16 times in one defensive category or another and wound up his career with a lifetime .980 mark – at the time of his retirement, he was the all-time major league leader.

On August 2, 1947, Doerr was given a night at Fenway. He received an estimated $22,500 worth of gifts including a car.

In early August 1951, in the midst of another excellent year, Bobby suffered a serious back problem. He’d hurt it a bit bending over for a slow-hit ground ball; he felt something give, but continued the game. Quite a while afterwards, he woke up one morning and found he could hardly get out of bed or put on his shoes. He got some treatment but missed nearly three weeks before returning to play. He got in only a few more games. The problem persisted, and he had to bow out after just one at-bat in the first game of the September 7 doubleheader. Fears that it was a ruptured disc proved not the case and surgery was ruled out, but Doerr was told to rest the remainder of the season.  

At season’s end, Doerr could look back on 1,247 RBIs, a career batting average of .288 and the aforementioned home run and fielding totals, and some 2,042 major-league base hits.

Bobby had played most of his career for just two managers: Joe Cronin and Joe McCarthy. He felt Cronin was “firm, but he patted you on the back; he always encouraged you in different ways. That was when I was younger, and was a big help to me.”  McCarthy was a “much firmer disposition kind of guy” who was admittedly “a little more difficult to play for” – but Bobby recognized that he played some of his best seasons for McCarthy.8

He’d played 14 seasons in the majors and had a good career. Though only 33, he didn’t want to risk more serious injury and decided to retire to his farm in Oregon. Over time, the back fused itself in some fashion and he found himself able to lift bales of hay and sacks of grain. He began raising cattle, fattening steers for resale, but there was almost no profit in it for the small herd of 100 or so that he could hold on his spread. When Bobby returned to Boston for a night to honor Joe Cronin in 1956, he was asked if he might like to manage in Boston’s system. He declined, but did take a position that he describes as “kind of like a roving coach in the minor leagues” beginning in 1957. He is listed as a Red Sox scout for the years 1957-66. He did a lot of traveling, checking out Red Sox prospects in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Winston-Salem, Corning, and other locations.

Doing this work for several years, Doerr came to know Dick Williams, particularly after Williams took over as manager of the Toronto farm club. “I got to know him pretty good when he was with Toronto. I have to say that seeing him operate in the minor leagues coaching and managing, and then three years at the Red Sox level, he was the best manager that I saw. Now Joe Cronin was very good. I loved Joe Cronin, to play for. But if I had to pick a manager to take a team that was potentially a winning team, Dick Williams someway was able to put something together[,] and I thought he was one of the best managers I saw.”

After he was named Red Sox manager for the 1967 season, Dick Williams asked Bobby to serve as his first base coach. He served for the three seasons that Williams managed, 1967-1969. Doerr agrees that Williams “wasn’t the most liked guy. He didn’t tolerate easy mistakes. Some way or another, though, the players never got uptight playing for him. He kept a tight ship and to take that club in ’67 and put it into a pennant winner, there were so many things he did that he was the best guy I saw.”   They did not have frequent coaches meetings. “He said what you’re supposed to do and he let you do it. You worked with the batter. Nobody ever interfered with what I was supposed to do.”  Doerr’s job was to work with the hitters, as well as coach first. He was familiar with most of the young hitters, having seen them while doing his work as a roving instructor. Eddie Popowski had the same store of experience, and both offered a stable, almost paternal influence to an exceptionally young ballclub. Dick Williams told interviewer Jeff Angus, “He helped me out quite a bit when I was in Toronto. In ‘67, he was a buffer between people, a soft-spoken guy who could help get the message across.”

Second baseman Mike Andrews of the 1967 Sox told the Boston Herald’s Steve Buckley, “Bobby Doerr was my mentor. When I was in the minors, I always seemed to improve when he came along. I had so much faith in him that if he told me I’d be a better hitter if I changed my shoelaces, I’d have done it.”9 

After Williams was fired late in 1969, incoming manager Eddie Kasko brought in his new staff for the 1970 campaign.

Several years later, Doerr was named coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, and served them for a number of years as the team’s hitting coach. “I really didn’t want to go back into baseball,” he says, “but they made it so nice for me. Pat Gillick was really good to work with. Peter Bavasi. I was there ’77 through ’81 and then I worked a couple of years in the minor leagues. More or less spring training, up to Medicine Hat with the rookie team. I didn’t do much after ’82, ’83.”  

In 1986, Bobby Doerr and Ernie Lombardi were named to the Hall of Fame by the special veterans committee and were inducted with Willie McCovey in August that year. On May 21, 1988, the Red Sox retired Bobby’s uniform number, #1. Addressing those who might have questioned his Hall of Fame credentials, Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe noted that the nine-time All-Star had a higher RBI-per-game average than players such as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Stan Musial, as well as many others, including Ernie Banks, Orlando Cepeda, Harmon Killebrew, Mike Schmidt, and Willie Stargell.10

Bobby’s son Don Doerr later played some college ball at the University of Washington and went into the Basin League in the middle 1960’s, pitching for the Sturgis club against future major leaguers like Jim Lonborg and Jim Palmer. Bobby rated his curve ball of major-league caliber but says he “didn’t have quite enough fast ball…didn’t have quite enough to go far in professional ball.” 

In his later years, Doerr devoted his life to care for his wife Monica, wheelchair-bound for much of her later years due to multiple sclerosis. Mrs. Doerr suffered two strokes in 1999 and then a final one which brought about her passing in 2003.

Bob Doerr split his time between his two properties in Oregon and was able to enjoy more time with his son, retired himself after a successful career as a manager with the accounting firm of Coopers and Lybrand, based in Eugene. Bob visited Boston two or three times a year, such as for a reunion of the remaining 1946 Red Sox that kicked off the 2006 baseball season in Opening Day ceremonies. His last visit was in 2012 for the 100th anniversary of the opening of Fenway Park.

Doerr died at the age of 99 on November 13, 2017 in Junction City, Oregon. He had been the oldest living member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame at the time of his death, and the only remaining major-league player from the 1930s.

A version of this biography originally appeared in “The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field” (Rounder Books, 2007), edited by Bill Nowlin and Dan Desrochers.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com.

Thanks to Jeff Angus, Mark Armour, Dick Beverage, Maury Brown, Dan Desrochers, Bobby Doerr, J. Thomas Hetrick, and David Paulson.

Notes

A scrappy, curly-haired Alabaman who spoke with a Southern drawl, Finney stood 6 feet tall and weighed 180 pounds; batted from the left side; and threw from the right. He spent 15 years in the major leagues between 1931 and 1947, and fanned just 186 times in 4,631 at-bats, or only once for every 24.9 official turns, one of the 50 best ratios in major-league history.

A .287 career hitter who hustled whenever he was on the field, the fiery Finney slugged just 31 big-league home runs, but hit 203 doubles and 85 triples. Although he could scamper around the bases, he was not a strong basestealer and swiped just 39 sacks in 84 tries. A top-of-the-order slap hitter, Finney scored 643 runs and drove in 494. He collected 1,329 career hits and walked 329 times to post a .336 on-base percentage.

At his best in his natural position, right field, Finney also played first base for Mack and Cronin. “What almost clinches a post for Finney is the fact that he can play first base like a regular,” James Isaminger wrote for The Sporting News.  “He is great on ground balls and handles all kinds of throws. He really is an artistic first sacker. A man who can play both first and the outfield as Finney does is too good to be turned loose.” Most often a reserve, Finney still appeared in 100 or more big-league games in seven seasons.

He was highly competitive – Jimmie Foxx once said, “He’s a guy that’ll cut your heart out to win a ballgame” — and loved to needle opponents. Sporting News editor J.G. Taylor Spink recalled in a story about player superstitions, “Bobo Newsom, the garrulous Senator slinger, also has an allergy for small pieces of paper. It was worked to the limit one day by Lou Finney, who, along with the rest of the Athletics, was being mesmerized by Bobo’s fast ball. As he took the field one inning, Finney stuffed a newspaper in his pocket. Out in right field, he tore the thing to little bits, and spilled them all over the mound as he came into the dugout after the third out. Newsom went into a tantrum; park attendants had to be called to clean up the wind-blown bits before Buck would agree to pitch again. By that time he was well cooled out again and the A’s hitters knocked him out of the box.”

A fine all-around athlete “who never has any winter weight to melt,” Finney continued his career as a passionate player-manager in the minors when his major-league career ended. Later, he returned home to Alabama to run a small business with his older brother, Hal, a former National League catcher.

Louis Klopsche Finney was born on August 13, 1910, in Chambers County, Alabama, the fifth of Charlie and Mary (Wilson) Finney’s 10 children. The Finney family came to America from Scotland before the Revolutionary War and members of the clan served under the Stars and Bars on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Charlie and Mary were of Scottish and Irish descent, were both native Alabamans, and were both educated. They married in 1902. A year later, daughter Ida was born. Their first son, Harold, nicknamed Hal, followed in 1905 (though some sources list 1907). Jack was born in 1906, daughter Rebecca arrived in 1908, and Louis (listed in both the 1920 and 1930 United States Census as “Lewis”), two years after that. Mary had read an inspirational biography of German author Louis Klopsche, a German immigrant who founded the Christian Herald, and tagged her son with the unwieldy moniker. After Louis arrived, Sarah, John, May, Bettie, and finally William, who was born in 1924, followed. 

Lou’s birthplace is listed as Buffalo, and Hal’s as La Fayette (often spelled “Lafayette”), though it is possible both were born on the 1,200-acre cotton and oats farm the family owned in White Plains, a short distance from each town. Buffalo, a half-mile north, was the Finney family’s mailing address and La Fayette, five miles to the south, is the Chambers County seat and the 1914 birthplace of boxing legend Joe Louis. Chambers County is located in the middle of the eastern edge of Alabama, along the Georgia border, and between Montgomery, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. Charles and Mary’s children attended school five miles north and east at Five Points. Oldest brother Hal went on to play baseball at Birmingham Southern College, about 120 miles west and north of the family home. Jack, perhaps the finest athlete in the Finney family, played football for Birmingham Southern, though injuries cut his career short. Lou left high school to follow his brothers to the college, but quit after he fractured both legs in a football game. He returned home and earned his diploma from Five Points High, where he starred as a third baseman for the baseball team and lettered in football and basketball.   

Finney played semipro baseball at Akron, Ohio, in 1929, but when the 1930 Census reached the Five Points Hamburg Region of Chambers County in April, “Lewis” was back on the family farm and at work at a rubber plant. Legend suggests that he was seated behind two mules in late June 1930, when a neighbor informed him that the Carrollton (Georgia) Champs of the Class D Georgia-Alabama League needed an outfielder. Finney answered the call. Just 19 years old, he launched a barrage on the league in his first season in organized baseball. He batted .389 with 17 doubles and 7 home runs before Carrollton and Talladega, the league’s cellar dwellers, disbanded on August 14.

By that time, he had been spotted by Ira Thomas, a scout for Connie Mack’s Athletics. Philadelphia purchased Finney’s contract after the 1930 season and assigned him to the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Senators of the Class B New York-Pennsylvania League for 1931. However, he failed to impress the Harrisburg manager and was transferred to the York (Pennsylvania) White Roses in the same league. At York, he resumed his assault on minor-league pitchers. He batted .347 for manager Jack Bentley and earned The Sporting News’ All-NYP honors.

Mack purchased the young Alabaman’s contract for the season’s final weeks. Just a month past his 21^st birthday, Finney made his big-league debut for the Tall Tactician on September 12, 1931, against the St. Louis Browns. The Athletics were in the midst of a 19-game home stand, and Finney appeared in nine games – all at Shibe Park – and rapped out nine hits, including a triple, in 24 at-bats. He scored seven runs and drove in three in his three-week stint. 

Finney spent the 1932 season with the Portland Beavers of the highly competitive Pacific Coast League. Often called the Third Major League, the PCL boasted a number of future and former major leaguers. Two of the best in 1932 were Finney and fellow Philadelphia farmhand Michael Franklin “Pinky” Higgins, both of whom made The Sporting News’ All-PCL team. One or the other was among the league leaders in every offensive category to propel Portland to the PCL pennant with a 111-78 record. Finney slapped 268 hits and batted .351 with 7 triples, all team highs, and finished third in the league’s Most Valuable Player voting. Sporting News correspondent “Beaver-Duck” reported that “Lou Finney is just about the sensation of the league in right field. In batting, fielding, and throwing, but above all in pepper and hustling spirit, this 22-year-old looks like a certain major leaguer. He loves to play, does his best work in the pinches, and does it with the eager enthusiasm of a youth to whom winning the game for his team means much more than base hits for his individual average.” 

Still 22 years old, Finney rejoined the Athletics and his Portland teammate Higgins, who was Philadelphia’s third baseman in 1933. Finney enjoyed a splendid spring training and was viewed as a replacement for Al Simmons, one of baseball’s all-time great outfielders, whom Mack had traded to Chicago before the season. Finney was “emulating Ty Cobb of a quarter-century ago with his base-running,” Bill Dooley gushed in The Sporting News. 

“I think Finney will not be long in making Mack forget Simmons,” Dooley wrote. “Not a slugger like the great Milwaukeean, Finney is none the less a sharp hitter and a lot faster than Simmons. Here is a lad whose baserunning will open a lot of eyes. He is not only fast on the basepaths, but alert and daring. Any fielder who loafs in returning one of Finney’s hits to the infield will find him taking an extra base.” 

Dooley was also impressed by the “Alabama flychaser’s” desire to improve. “Finney didn’t know how to slide into a bag when he reported to the Athletics this spring. One of the first requests he made of the coaching staff was a sliding pit. He practiced in it day after day until he learned.” When the regular season started, Finney was still hot. But he was nervous and quickly cooled off, and Mack sold his contract with the right to recall the outfielder on 24 hours’ notice, to Montreal of the Double A International League. There, Finney hit .298 with 23 extra-base hits in 65 games. His second home run for the Royals came on his last at-bat, on August 15, after Mack notified Montreal to return Finney to Philly. The sudden recall derailed the Royals’ playoff hopes and created friction between Montreal and Mack. Back in Philadelphia, Finney continued to hit well.

For the season, he played 63 games as an outfielder, appeared in 11 additional games as a pinch hitter, and batted .267 with 12 doubles and 3 home runs in 240 at-bats.

Between seasons, there were rumors that Mack would trade the youngster to Boston, but when the 1934 season opened; he was Philadelphia’s fourth outfielder behind Indian Bob Johnson, Doc Cramer, and Ed Coleman, and sometimes spelled slugger Jimmie Foxx at first base, roles he reprised the next year. Finney played in 201 games in 1934 and 1935, batted .276, and though he hit just one homer in the two seasons, he smacked 22 doubles. In the early summer of 1934, he fell ill and while he was away from the team, and rumors circulated that he was really a Polish player named Louis Klopsche. Finney felt compelled to assure his teammates on his return that the reports were errant and writer James Isaminger told for the first time the story of Finney’s naming. The Alabaman was a valuable stopgap for Mack in those two seasons. When Higgins was hurt in 1934, Foxx moved to third and Finney held down first, and when rookie Wally Moses crashed into a fence and was injured in 1935, Finney moved back to the outfield. In 1935, Mack sent Foxx behind the plate 26 times and played Finney at first, but a spate of Athletics injuries nixed the experiment.

In June 1935, soon after teammate Merritt “Sugar” Cain was traded to St. Louis, he and Finney fought fiercely before a game at Sportsman’s Park. Cain, a Georgian, first knocked Finney down, and then the Scotsman from Alabama bounced up and decked Cain twice, then pounced upon him. The Sporting News described the intensity, but not the reason for the brawl. Shortly after the grudge match between the two – who had been teammates not only with the A’s but with Carrollton — Finney was hit by a batting-practice line drive that fractured his left thumb and he missed 10 days.

Mack continued to feel the effects of the Depression and declining attendance at Shibe Park, and dealt the powerful Foxx to Boston before the 1936 season for players and cash. Rookie Alfred “Chubby” Dean (77 games) shared the first-base duties with Finney, who also played the outfield in 73 games. Playing nearly every day for the first time, he batted .302 in 151 games and collected 37 extra-base hits, though just one was a home run – an inside-the-park effort. The AL leader in at-bats with 653, he scored a career high 100 runs and drove in 41. On July 27, he collected five hits in a 15-8 win over the White Sox. Finney’s fifth hit came in the ninth when the Athletics scored seven runs off two Chicago pitchers, the second his old nemesis Cain. Erroneously, the Associated Press article in the New York Times reported that it was Hal Finney (who didn’t manage a single hit that summer in 35 at bats for the Pirates in his fifth and final major-league season) who collected the four singles and a triple for Philadelphia.

Despite Finney’s fine season, he and Dean split the first base duties in 1937. (Dean, a lifetime .274 hitter, later unwisely moved to the mound and compiled a 30-46 record and a 5.08 ERA as pitcher.) Finney did play 50 games at first in 1937, made the only appearance of his career at second base, where he recorded an assist, and played 39 games in the outfield. Bouncing around the lineup and battling an ailment he picked up in Mexico in spring training, a hernia, a chronic sinus infection, and later, appendicitis, he saw his average slip to .251. He hit another round-tripper, again inside the park, his sixth home run in six major-league seasons. With 10 days left in the regular season, Finney, with Mack’s consent, returned home to Alabama and underwent surgery on his sinuses, had a hernia repaired, had the inflamed appendix that had bothered him for months extracted, and had his tonsils removed.

Healthy in 1938, the 27-year-old “Alabama Assassin” enjoyed a power surge when he slugged 10 home runs – with nine of them clearing the fences. He finished fourth in the AL with 12 triples and smacked 21 doubles. He split time at first base with Dick Siebert, Nick Etten, and others, served as a fourth outfielder behind Johnson, Moses, and Sam Chapman, and played in a total of 122 games.

In 1939 Siebert started at first base and Finney batted just .136 in nine games before Mack sold him to Boston on May 9. Detroit and Boston had both claimed Finney on waivers; Mack dealt him to the Red Sox, who paid $2,500 more than the $7,500 waiver price. He joined a Boston team that boasted former teammates Foxx, Cramer, and Lefty Grove, along with 20-year-old Ted Williams, who had made his big-league debut 18 days earlier. The Alabaman enjoyed great success as a pinch-hitter – he led the AL with 13 pinch hits in 40 at-bats — then finished the season at first base after Foxx underwent an appendectomy.

For the Red Sox, Finney flourished under manager Joe Cronin and veteran scout and hitting instructor Hugh Duffy. He credited Duffy, the legendary New Englander, for teaching him to snap his wrist. The results were immediate. Finney batted .325 in 249 at-bats in his 95 games with Boston, with 22 extra-base hits, including a pinch-hit home run at Sportsman’s Park. The next spring, he praised Duffy to the Boston Traveler’s John Drohan, among others: “I was with the Red Sox for a week or so when Hughie Duffy, who led the National League in batting way back in 1894, asked me if I were willing to take some advice from a 76-year-old man (Duffy was actually 72 at the time). As I realized I was not going anywhere, I told him I was more than willing. Consequently, Hughie, who was one of the Red Sox coaches and batted grounders in the infield practice despite his age, converted me from a choke hitter into a batsman who grabbed his bat way down at the end and swung from the hip. He also changed my stance in the batter’s box, spreading my feet a trifle further apart. He also told me to put more wrist into my swing like Ted Williams. Well, I was not hitting my weight when I left the Athletics and I wound up the 1939 season with a mark of .310, the best I ever had.” The Red Sox posted an 89-62 record and finished second to the Joe DiMaggio-led Yankees, who methodically captured their fourth straight AL pennant despite the loss of Lou Gehrig to the illness that would tragically cut short his life.

In spite of a broken finger in spring training, courtesy of Cincinnati’s Johnny Vander Meer, and a nagging cold, Finney enjoyed another fine season in Boston in 1940. He played in the outfield in place of the injured Dom DiMaggio, and hit so well that the Red Sox postponed DiMaggio’s return, before Finney himself suffered a leg injury. When he came back, he moved to first when Foxx injured his knee in a collision. When Double-X returned, Cronin asked his team captain to play catcher for the injured Gene Desautels, which allowed the Boston manager to keep both Finney and DiMaggio in the lineup. In either position, Finney hit well. He was the first major-league player to record 100 hits that season, ranked among the league batting leaders through the summer, and finished with a .320 average, ninth best in the AL. Finney and New York’s Charlie “King Kong” Keller tied for second in the league with 15 triples, four behind league leader Barney McCosky of Detroit. The 15 triples were a career best for Finney, who also achieved personal highs with 31 doubles and 73 runs batted in. He scored 73 times and was the AL’s toughest man to strike out, fanning just once per 41.1 at-bats, well ahead of runner-up Charlie Gehringer of Detroit, who struck out once every 30.2 AB’s. “Finney has been tremendous for us,” Cronin said in June. “His hitting has won him the right-field job and I’m going down the line with him. He’s a great team player. Never squawks and does a great job every day.” 

Finney continued to credit Duffy, and attributed some of his success to a trip to the Louisville Slugger factory. “I never had a bat I liked in my life,” Finney told United Press writer George Kirksey. “So last May when the Red Sox played an exhibition game in Louisville, I went out to the bat factory to get the kind of stick I wanted. I saw some old Max Bishop models stuck away and I picked up one of them. I liked the feel of them so I had a model made up with a few minor changes. Right away I began to hit better. Then I began to watch Ted Williams and with coaching from Hughie Duffy, I learned to copy Ted’s wrist action and follow-through.” Duffy, who had hit .440 for the Boston Beaneaters in 1894 (SABR members’ research resulted in the figure being raised from .438), was somewhat modest. “Finney goes around telling everybody I made a batter out of him, but he’s exaggerating,” Duffy told the Traveler’s Jack Broudy. “ It’s true I saw several things he was doing wrong when he came to the Red Sox and we worked on them together until he straightened them out, but that doesn’t mean I should get the credit for it. Lou is a fine boy and very appreciative.” Duffy told another writer, “Sure I told him about the bat swing, but he worked hard in changing his style and it was by his own perseverance that he improved.”

In July, Finney made his only All-Star Game appearance, and coaxed a walk from Carl Hubbell in the NL’s 4-0 win. On May 11, he hit one of his two career grand slams, off Marius Russo at Yankee Stadium, to help Boston send New York to a defeat, the Bronx Bombers’ eighth straight. Though never again an All-Star, he continued to provide valuable depth for the Red Sox the next two years. In 1941, Finney banged out 24 more doubles and 4 home runs, and batted .288. In 1942, he hit .285 in 113 games for the Red Sox at the age of 31. He was particularly adept in night games, collecting 14 hits in 35 after-dark at-bats between 1939 and 1941 — a .400 average, even better than the .324 mark Williams posted in 34 at-bats.

By 1942, World War II was changing the face of baseball. Players began to leave the game to enter the military or to work in industries vital to the war. After the season, Williams entered the Navy, where he served as a fighter pilot. Finney, who had applied for a chief specialist rating in the Navy at one point, returned home to the 171-acre cotton farm near White Plains, Alabama, that he and his wife, the former Margie Griffin, owned in Chambers County. Finney, who was 32 years old and had no children, had received his draft notice, and had to choose between entering military service and staying on his farm to grow food, an occupation deemed critical to the war effort. On January 11, 1943, the New York World Telegram reported, “Lou Finney, Red Sox outfielder, was told by his Alabama draft board to remain on his farm or be inducted.” He voluntarily retired from the game and sat out the entire 1943 season and the first months of the 1944 campaign. In June, two weeks after the Allies invaded France on D-Day, Finney left Alabama and returned to baseball and Boston, though The Sporting News noted he weighed a hefty 225 pounds when he reported. After a week of conditioning, Finney was activated on June 25, and batted a respectable .287 in 68 games. At the end of the season, his teammates voted him a full share, $241.87, of their fourth-place money.

However, his Alabama draft board tracked Finney to Boston in August, and delivered notice that he had been called to active duty and was required to report for a medical examination. Again Finney returned to his farm. The Sporting News reported, “Now Lou must stay on the farm until the war is over, which may be too late for him to resume his play.”

While Finney farmed through the first half of the 1945 season, the Allied nations subdued Germany in May, and moved closer to victory in the Pacific over Japan. Once again, Finney journeyed north to rejoin the Red Sox. Cronin, who broke a leg on April 19 and hadn’t played since, inactivated himself to open a roster spot for Finney on July 15, but used the Alabaman just twice, both times as a pinch hitter, before the Red Sox sold his contract to the defending American League champion St. Louis Browns on July 27, 1945. Finney spent time at first base and in the outfield, though Pete Gray, who had lost an arm in a childhood accident, served as the fourth outfielder for manager Luke Sewell. Finney also played one game at third base, and handled one of two chances successfully. In 58 games, he collected 59 hits, including 8 doubles, in 213 at-bats, a .277 average. On August 1, he smacked a grand slam off Dizzy Trout at Briggs Field (later called Tiger Stadium), and on September 9, he scampered around the bases for the final home run of his major league career, an inside-the-park circuit clout against Washington’s Alex Carrasquel at Griffith Stadium.

At 35, he returned to the Browns at the start of the 1946 season. But the war had ended the previous year, and many of the veterans had started to return to organized baseball. And though Finney collected nine singles in 30 at-bats, a .300 average, the Browns released him on May 29.

That summer, Finney returned to his roots and played 45 games at first base and in the outfield for the last place Opelika Owls and later the second-place Valley Rebels, who represented the tri-city area of Valley and Lanett, Alabama, and West Point, Georgia, in the Georgia-Alabama League. He batted .299 and clubbed six home runs for the two teams.   

Finney took one more shot at the brass ring when he pinch-hit unsuccessfully four times for the Philadelphia Phillies, his only at-bats in the National League, before the Phillies released him on May 13, 1947, at the age of 36.  

Less than a week later, with his major-league career done, Finney returned to the minors, this time with St. Petersburg in the Class C Florida International League. With the Saints floundering in last place and 17 games behind in the standings, his old teammate Jimmie Foxx was fired on May 17. Finney took over a few days later as a player-manager and guided St. Pete to a 71-80 record, good for fifth in the eight-team league. Primarily a first baseman, he continued to spray the ball around. He hit .308 with 26 doubles, 9 triples, and 2 home runs. 

Before the 1948 season started, Finney visited the Red Sox spring training camp, where he watched rookie lefty Mickey McDermott pitching.  The Sporting News reported that Finney said, “I remember hitting against him last spring. He loaded the bases in the first inning with none out, then fanned the side. I was the third one. I worked him down to 3 and 2 and took a toe-hold for what I expected to be the fast one. He broke off a Bob Feller jug that nearly unhinged my back when I swung. He fanned seven of us in the three innings he worked. I wonder if Cronin would let me have him? I’d guarantee St. Pete a pennant.”

Though he didn’t land McDermott or win a pennant, the Saints posted a 78-73 record in 1948 and improved to fourth with a full season under Finney. St. Petersburg’s attendance of nearly 137,947 was more than 23,000 better than the year before, the second best in the league behind league champion Havana. Finney played first base and in the outfield. He hit .314, with 27 doubles, 4 triples, and 8 homers. The fiery Finney not only drew fans to the park, he got them fired up. After a 1948 doubleheader, The Sporting News reported, “The fans’ ire was fanned when manager Lou Finney was tossed out of both contests. The umpires were given a police escort to their quarters, but some 500 gathered outside and refused to leave. Finally, the arbiters rode out in a police car, while policemen made way with a flying wedge through the crowd.”

At the baseball meetings after the season in Minneapolis, wealthy new West Palm Beach owner Lucius B. Ordway lured Finney away from St. Petersburg, which then slumped to seventh under four different managers in 1949. Finney piloted West Palm Beach to a fifth-place finish in the league, which had moved up to Class B. The Indians posted a 74-78 record, 4½ games better than the previous year, and enjoyed an attendance increase of 8,000. Finney played in the outfield, more sparingly than in the previous year, but still batted .286 with 14 extra-base hits. And in 226 plate appearances, he did not strike out once.

Despite his success, when Ordway entered into a working agreement with Philadelphia, the Athletics picked a new manager for West Palm Beach for 1950. The Indians finished seven games worse than in 1949 and attendance fell by more than 24,000. Finney managed to catch on with Temple (Texas) of the Class B Big State League. Temple had finished last the year before, and Finney again turned things around on the field and at the gate. The Eagles improved by 17 2/3 games, to 74-70 in 1950 and attendance leapt up to 105,081, nearly 32,000 more than the year before and the best in the league. Finney batted .345 in 68 games for the fourth-place Eagles, who lost in the playoffs to regular-season champion Texarkana.

In December 1950, Finney was appointed to manage the Raleigh Capitals of the Carolina League, but resigned in February 1951 to devote time to his business in Chambers County and was replaced by Joe Medwick.

Two years later, Finney left Alabama to manage the Lincoln (Nebraska) Chiefs, a Milwaukee Braves farm team in the Class A Western League. The Chiefs managed nine more wins than they had the previous year and drew 26,000 more fans, but in the final month of the season, Finney resigned in order to again to join his brother Hal in the family feed and grain business, and was replaced by Walter Linden.

With that, Finney’s baseball career came to an end. Lou ran the family firm for the remainder of his life with Hal. Like Lou, Hal broke into the major leagues in 1931. That year he played 10 games; six at catcher and four as a pinch-hitter, for the Pirates. He played 31 games the next year, and 56 in 1933, when he hit his lone homer and drove in 18 runs. He played in five games in 1934, spent the rest of that season in the minors with the Albany (New York) Senators in the International League, missed the 1935 season because of a fractured skull and an eye injury suffered in a tractor accident and started the 1936 season without a hit in 35 at-bats before the Pirates released him. The brothers worked together in Chambers County until April 22, 1966, when Lou, at the age of 55, suffered a coronary thrombosis, a blockage of a coronary artery, and died at the Chambers County Hospital in La Fayette. He was buried in the Finney family plot of the Chapel Hill Cemetery, just outside of White Plains. Hal, who died on December 20, 1991, is also buried at Chapel Hill. 

Sources

www.baseball-almanac.com

www.baseball-reference.com

www.baseballlibrary.com

www.georgiaencyclopedia.com

www.retrosheet.org

The Tattersall-McConnell Home Run Log, The SABR Baseball Encyclopedia.

Daniel, W Harrison. Jimmie Foxx: The Life and Times of a Baseball Hall of Famer, 1907-1967 (Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland, 2004)

Golenbock, Peter. Red Sox Nation.  (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2005)

Looney, Jack. Now Batting, Number… The Mystique, Superstition, and Lore of Baseball’s Uniform Numbers. (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2006)

McConnell, Bob, and David Vincent, ed. SABR Presents The Home Run Encyclopedia: The Who, What, And Where of Every Home Run Hit Since 1876. (New York: Macmillan, 1996.)

Hardball Times, vol. 9: 293-301.

Stars and Stripes, The Sporting News, Boston Globe, Boston Post. Boston Traveler, New York Times, New York World Telegram, Philadelphia Evening Ledger.

Lou Finney Hall of Fame File.

Certificate of Death #10955, State of Alabama.

American League Service Bureau, Associated Press, and United Press.