Despite winning 24 games in the regular season, the Cuban-born pitcher had lasted only 4⅓ innings in the opening game of the American League Championship Series. He was knocked off the mound after just 2⅓ innings of the second game of the World Series. Another short outing seemed in the works.

The battery huddled in the runway behind the home dugout at Memorial Stadium, where they were joined by pitching coach George Bamberger. Two of the hits, by Johnny Bench and Hal McRae, had come off screwballs high in the strike zone. A decision was made — no more scroogies, a lot more curves.

Cuellar retired the next 10 Reds, issued a walk, then stymied six more batters in a row. He gave up a pair of singles in the seventh, but got out of the inning to complete the game, sewing up the World Series in dominating fashion.

Bamberger, a quiet man with some unorthodox ideas about handling hurlers, flourished as pitching coach of the Orioles from 1968 to 1977. A 20-win season is a standard of excellence for a starting pitcher. Bamberger had 18 pitchers reach that mark, four of them — Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pat Dobson, and Dave McNally — doing so in 1971, the third consecutive year in which the O’s won the pennant.

“He’s one of the game’s greatest teachers,” longtime Orioles manager Earl Weaver once said. “ ‘Throw strikes,’ he would say. There is nothing complicated about baseball. Maybe that’s what makes George so good — there’s nothing complicated about George.”2 Shortly before Bamberger’s death in 2004, Weaver said, “If there was a Hall of Fame for pitching coaches, he should be there without a doubt.”3 Frank Cashen, the Orioles President during Bamberger’s years in Baltimore, said, simply, “He was the best pitching coach I ever saw.”4

Where Weaver was flamboyant and volatile, Bamberger was calm, unflappable, a pitcher’s friend. He was also nearly deaf in his right ear, so he made a point of sitting on Weaver’s left in the dugout.

Bamberger’s own major-league career was brief and undistinguished. In 18 seasons in the minors, he transformed himself from a wild thrower into a control pitcher who set a mark for consecutive innings pitched without issuing a walk. After his time coaching for the Orioles, he had two stints managing the Milwaukee Brewers, who were known as Bambi’s Bombers, with an unsuccessful spell as skipper of the New York Mets sandwiched in between the Milwaukee stints.

George Irvin Bamberger was born on Aug. 1, 1923, in Staten Island, New York. He attended McKee High before entering the US Army in 1943. The 5-foot-11½, 180-pound right-hander signed with the New York Giants as an amateur free agent in 1946, about the time two years were shaved from his age. The official guides always listed his birth year as 1925. He debuted in 1946 with the Class C Erie (Pennsylvania) Sailors of the Middle Atlantic League, going 13-3 with a league-leading earned-run average of 1.35. He was then promoted to the Class B Manchester (New Hampshire) Giants and, in 1948, to the Triple-A Jersey City Giants. He led the International League in wild pitches in 1949 with 11, though he also tied for the league lead in shutouts with five. Pitching for the Oakland Oaks the following season, he led the Pacific Coast League in wild pitches with 13.

During the 1950 season Bamberger married Wilma Morrison of New Jersey at First Presbyterian Church in Oakland. The best man was Oaks second baseman Bobby Hofman. The entire ballclub, including president Brick Laws and manager Charlie Dressen, joined the couple afterwards for a cocktail hour followed by a buffet dinner.

Bamberger made his major-league debut with the Giants on April 19, 1951, during the second game of a doubleheader at Boston against the Braves. In two innings, he gave up two runs on a walk and three hits, including a home run by Sam Jethroe. In his only other appearance with the Giants that season, he failed to register an out while surrendering two more runs.

Bamberger was soon demoted to play for the Ottawa Giants in the International League. On Father’s Day he pitched a no-hitter in a 1-0 victory over the Maple Leafs at Toronto. Not only did Bamberger hold Toronto hitless, but he was responsible for the game’s only run, coaxing a bases-loaded walk on four pitches from mound rival Russ Bauers in the second inning. After the game Bamberger lit a fat cigar, in celebration not of his no-hitter but of the birth of daughter Judy in New York the night before.

In 1952 Bamberger started the season with the Giants again, appearing in five games and allowing four runs in four innings. In June he was traded back to the Triple-A Oakland Oaks in exchange for pitcher Hal Gregg.

He spent four seasons as a starting pitcher for the Oaks, compiling a 52-44 record. The Oaks moved to Vancouver (and joined the Baltimore system) for the 1956 Pacific Coast League season, and Bamberger went along, spending seven seasons with the Mounties. He went 9-14 his first season in British Columbia, complaining of a sore arm that cost him his fastball. In 1957 new manager Charlie Metro convinced him the only way to recover was to “throw, throw and throw.”5 It worked. Bamby’s exploits at Capilano (now Nat Bailey) Stadium made him a perennial fan favorite. Bamberger carried himself like someone who knew he belonged in The Show and had been left behind by an oversight that would surely soon be corrected.

“Bamberger was a chesty guy with thinning hair,” Denny Boyd of the Vancouver Sun once wrote, “a nose the size of a wedge of pie and a dimple in which you could catch thrown balls.” Boyd dubbed him the Staten Island Stopper. The pitcher’s limited repertoire — a so-so fastball, a deceptive changeup, a wicked curve that dipped like the new roller-coaster at the city’s exhibition grounds — was enhanced by the occasional use of a spitball, an illegal pitch and a scofflaw’s best hope. “We all knew he used it,” Boyd wrote, “but we could never get him to admit to throwing the wet one.”6 Bamby acknowledged that he had a special pitch that he called the Staten Island Sinker. It certainly was wet like a sink.

In 1958 Bamberger established a league record by pitching 68⅔ consecutive innings — the equivalent of more than seven complete games — without allowing a base on balls. The old mark of 64 innings had been set by Julio Bonetti in 1939. Bamberger’s record stood for more than four decades. The streak began on July 10, after he walked a batter in San Diego in the fourth inning. He recorded his 100th PCL victory in his next start, for which the Mounties held a George Bamberger Day on August 1. The club gave him 100 Canadian silver dollars. In return, Bamby beat Seattle 6-3, again without walking any batters.

“When you come right down to it, there is no excuse for walking a batter,” Bamberger told Boyd in 1958. “It’s accepted as normal, but it isn’t normal; it’s a mistake. If you throw four bad pitches, you have made four mistakes. There is no other sport where you can survive making that many mistakes.”7

The streak ended on Aug. 14, when a Phoenix pinch-hitter walked on four pitches. The record remained unchallenged until bettered by Nashville’s Brian Meadows in 2003.

Bamberger’s final cup of coffee in the bigs came courtesy of the Orioles, who used him three times in April 1959. His entire major-league career involved pitching just 14⅓ innings for two teams over three seasons separated by eight years. He had no wins or losses and one save in relief, and carries into eternity an inflated ERA of 9.42. He returned to Vancouver and kept pitching.

In a 1962 game in Vancouver, Bamberger took part in a wacky episode. He was outfitted with a radio receiver sewn into an inside pocket of his uniform. It looked as though he had a cardboard pack of cigarettes in his undershirt. Unseen in the Vancouver dugout, manager Jack McKeon barked commands into a transmitter. The skulduggery failed to catch out any opposing baserunners, although it did bamboozle fans and the first baseman, who took one unexpected pickoff throw in the chest. Before long, baseball banned the use of radios on the field.

Bamberger added coaching duties to his responsibilities in 1960 while still pitching for the Mounties. After retiring as a player at the end of the 1963 season, which he spent at Dallas-Fort Worth, Bamberger worked for the Orioles as a minor-league pitching instructor. He was hired as the parent club’s pitching coach in 1968, replacing Harry Brecheen, who had held the post for 14 seasons. Manager Hank Bauer announced in spring training that he was tired of having pitchers with sore arms on his roster. Bauer would not last the season, but the Orioles found a solution to the problem in their new pitching coach.

Bamberger’s theory was that sore arms and elbows resulted from underwork, not overwork. He insisted that his pitchers run every day, even if tired, even on the road, so he ordered 35 minutes of sprints from foul pole to foul pole. “When you pitch, and your legs get tired from lifting them up on every windup, you can lose coordination,” he said. A shift in the mechanics could lead to loss of control, which could lead to wildness and sore arms.8

He also had his pitchers play catch for 15 minutes between starts, with 20 minutes of hard throwing the prescription two days after every start. He believed in pitchers throwing many innings and completing as many starts as they could. In 1970, Palmer threw 305 innings, Cuellar 297⅔, and McNally 296.

“My whole idea is to throw the ball over the plate,” Bamberger told Dave Anderson of the New York Times in 1979. “The most important pitch is a strike. But the trick is to change speeds. Trying to pinpoint a pitch is crazy. Throw the ball down the middle, but don’t throw the same pitch twice. Change the speed.”9

Though regarded by many as solely a pitching specialist, in 1978 Bamberger was hired to manage the Milwaukee Brewers, who had yet to post a winning season in their eight year history. Remarkably, he turned the perennial also-ran into contenders as Bambi’s Bombers posted 93 wins in 1978 and 95 in 1979. An amiable, happy man, the manager was known to join fans in the parking lot of County Stadium for postgame tailgate parties. After suffering a heart attack during spring training in 1980, he underwent a quintuple bypass. He returned in June, but did not last the season.

Two years later, in 1982, Bamberger became the skipper of the New York Mets. The 58-year-old florid and balding manager was greeted by a memorable description in New York magazine. “Bamberger resembles George Kennedy,” wrote Vic Ziegel, “but the voice is Art Carney’s Ed Norton.”10 The Mets were woeful, and could finish only 65-97 during Bamberger’s one complete season. “I don’t want to suffer anymore,” he said after resigning with a 16-30 record early in the 1983 season.11

Bamberger returned to manage the Brewers in 1985, but the team was not what it had been. After one poor season and most of a second, he was fired in September 1987 and retired for good.

After baseball Bamberger settled into a life of painting and golf in North Redington Beach, Florida. He died at his home there, after battling colon cancer, on April 4, 2004. He left Wilma, his wife of 53 years; three adult daughters; five grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a brother.

Sports Illustrated asked Jim Palmer, who won 20 games in seven seasons under Bamberger’s tutelage, for his memories: “George had flawless mechanics. If I ever got out of sync, I used to visualize him throwing batting practice. But with us — his ‘boys’ — he didn’t preach mechanics. He had a sixth sense of what a pitcher needed to be better, and he knew it could be different for each guy. There were a few hard rules, but everybody was unique, and he understood that. George’s great strength was he didn’t overcoach. There’s no place for panic on the mound.”12

This biography appears in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III.

Sources

Bob Chick, “Bamberger’s pitching theory was simple but quite effective,” The Tampa Tribune, March 4, 2000.

Clancy Loranger, “Mountie Bamberger steps out as ERA leader — 2.36,” The Sporting News, Sept. 3, 1958.

Tom Hawthorn, “Recalling the Mounties’ major minor legend,” The Tyee, April 26, 2004.

Notes

Roger Bowman was a 16-year-old high-school junior when a wire-service report presented him to the nation in 1944 as a “left-handed Bob Feller.”1 The schoolboy pitcher had thrown two no-hitters in his first six games of the 1944 season, surrendering a lone run to go with 91 strikeouts.

The previous summer he had visited the Polo Grounds, where he got pointers from New York Giants players as well as from Dolf Luque, the Cuban-born pitcher. The Associated Press report suggested that the boy’s father rejected signing immediately with the club, preferring that his son continue with his studies, which included a promising musical career.

In the end, young Bowman signed with the Giants organization at age 18 in 1946. He made his major-league debut three years later, by which time no one was comparing him to Feller.

The left-hander appeared in 50 games over five seasons (13 with the Giants and 37 with the Pittsburgh Pirates). His record in the majors was 2-11, both victories coming with the Giants in 1951. He was known for a slow curve, as well as for a hesitation windup that was described as “elaborate”2 and “weird.”3  Giants manager Leo Durocher tried to tinker with the windup in spring training only to be defied by the pitcher. “I’ve been winning with this delivery,” Bowman said.4

Most of Bowman’s 15-season professional career was spent in the minors with stops as far afield as Hawaii and Ottawa, Canada. In 1952 he threw a no-hitter for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. The next season the Pirates used him in 30 games, mostly as a reliever. That October, he accidentally riddled his pitching arm and hand with shotgun pellets in a hunting accident. After recovering, he returned to the PCL to enjoy the best season of his career, winning 22 games as a starter with the Hollywood Stars, tops in the league that season.

Roger Clinton Bowman was born on August 18, 1927, an only child for Rebecca (Hinkle) Bowman and Burdette F. Bowman. His father, a one-time semipro baseball player, worked as a bookkeeper in Amsterdam, New York, a thriving industrial center known as Rug City, located in the Mohawk Valley about 30 miles west of the state capital, Albany.

Young Bowman attended Amsterdam High, where he played basketball under coach Ed Clonek and baseball under John D. Tracy. The baseball team had been unbeaten in three years by the time Bowman was profiled by the Associated Press. The lefty pitched for his high-school team as well as for local amateur squads, such as one sponsored by Jim’s Tavern on Jay Street. His most outstanding performance in his senior year came off campus, as he pitched the Amsterdam Rugmakers to a 10-0 championship victory over Schenectady in an All-American Amateur Baseball Association tournament in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The young lefty issued one walk and two singles while striking out 24 batters, only three outs coming from batted balls.

Bowman appears to have transferred schools; he graduated from Wilbur H. Lynch High in 1945 and enrolled as a part-time student at Colgate University, 88 miles west of Amsterdam in Hamilton, New York. Before he completed his first semester, Bowman was called up for World War II naval duty and was stationed at Camp Peary, Virginia. After the war, Bowman spent several years studying at the university, attending classes during the fall semester as he built up credits towards a degree. In 1952 an Associated Press article on Bowman’s academic ambitions appeared in the Schenectady Gazette under the headline: “Bowman Seeks Diploma on Installment Basis.”5

When Bowman signed with the Giants organization in July 1946, he received a reported $15,000 bonus. (Another report placed the bonus at $18,000.) He was assigned to the Jersey City Giants of the International League, where he showed wildness by walking eight in just three innings of work. He was sent down to the Trenton (New Jersey) Giants of the Class B Interstate League, where he struck out 11 Harrisburg batters in his debut on August 15, three days before his 19th birthday. In a later start on the road in Wilmington, Delaware, Bowman was shelled by the Blue Rocks, failing to record an out in the fifth inning, by which time he had surrendered nine hits (and five costly bases on balls). Bowman went 2-4 in six games.

In 1947 Bowman went 17-8 for Trenton, including a string of nine consecutive victories despite continued wildness. A typical outing was a game against Lancaster Red Roses on May 16, when he walked 11 and struck out 11 in picking up the victory.

He spent most of the 1948 season with the Sioux City (Iowa) Soos in the Class A Western League, going 11-8. (He also appeared in five games for Jersey City with a loss as his only decision.) In a game on July 9, Bowman struck out 17 Des Moines batters only to have his team lose, 2-1. Bowman rebounded six days later by striking out 10 Lincoln batters in getting a victory. His 182 strikeouts for the season were second best in the Western League behind only fellow lefty Bobby Shantz’s 212. (The following season Shantz made his debut with the Philadelphia Athletics, the first of his 16 major-league seasons.)

Back on the hill for Jersey City in 1949, Bowman went 15-9 and showed greater control than in the past, issuing 90 walks in 194 innings pitched. He got a late-season call-up to the parent Giants, making his major-league debut in the second game of a doubleheader at Crosley Field in Cincinnati on Sept. 22. Bowman started and pitched four innings, giving up three hits (a double and two singles), walking four, and striking out three. The lone run he surrendered came when Virgil Stallcup, who had walked and advanced to third on a single, stole home on a double steal. (It was Stallcup’s only steal in a season in which he had 589 plate appearances.) Bowman was removed for a pinch-hitter as part of a four-run rally in the top of the fifth. He had no decision in a game the Reds went on to win, 8-4.

Bowman got his second start three days later, making his Polo Grounds debut against the Boston Braves, who chased him in the third inning after Connie Ryan hit a two-run homer.

The prospect spent the entire 1950 season with Jersey City, leading the International League in innings pitched (233) and strikeouts (188), going 16-11 while completing 19 of 30 starts.
As spring training opened in 1951, The Sporting News offered writers’ advice to each player on the Giants roster. For Bowman, the suggestion read: “Anybody who can pitch as well as you can’t miss, even if you aren’t a spring star.”6 Now aged 23, the willowy lefty stood 6-feet and weighed 175 pounds. He started the Giants’ ninth game of the season, a night game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Bowman was “looking mighty impressive,” John Drebinger reported for the New York Times.7 “[T]hings took a bad turn in the second when a single went by (Don) Mueller for a triple.” Del Wilber scored on a long foul out to left. “In the fourth,” Drebinger wrote, “the luckless Mueller wrecked Bowman completely when, with two out and two on, he cut across for Richie Ashburn’s drive into right center. It would have been an easy catch for Bobby Thomson but Don, on the dead run, could not hold the ball and it went for a two-bagger to score two. Come another real double by Willie Jones to drive in a third tally and Bowman had to bow out.” The Phillies hung on to win, 6-4, and Bowman had his first major-league decision, a loss.

The sportswriters took note, too, of Bowman’s unorthodox pitching style, described by the Times’s Roscoe McGowen as a “pretzel wind-up.”8

Bowman took a second loss on April 28 against the Brooklyn Dodgers, leaving after the first three batters in the sixth singled. The lefty was charged with five runs on six hits (including a home run by Carl Furillo) and three walks. It was the Giants’ 10th consecutive loss, leaving them at 2-11 in the National League basement, already trailing the league-leading Braves by seven games.

Bowman’s fortunes improved on May 5 when Leo Durocher tapped him in relief in the fifth inning of a home game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Giants trailed 3-2 when Bowman took to the mound. He gave up just three singles through five innings, as the Giants rallied for an 8-3 triumph and Bowman earned his first big-league win.

A second win was earned just five days later, as Bowman limited the St. Louis Cardinals to one run and three singles through six innings despite issuing seven walks. The Giants won, 3-2, their ninth victory in 11 games.

An ill-fated relief stint against the Cards in St. Louis on May 20 had Bowman come on in the seventh with two out and two on. He balked and then walked the only batter he faced, who later scored, enough to saddle Bowman (2-3) with the loss.

On June 3 Bowman got another start, in the second game of a Sunday doubleheader at the Polo Grounds, a grinding effort during which he gave up 11 hits (nine singles, two triples) in 4⅔ innings. He somehow gave up just two earned runs and did not factor in the decision as the Giants lost, 4-3.

By June 11 the Giants had fought back to a 27-26 record, six back of the league-leading Dodgers. No games were scheduled, but the Boston Red Sox were in New York for a midseason exhibition at the Polo Grounds as a fundraiser for the National Amputation Foundation. Many of the 5,586 fans who showed up were keen to see how Ted Williams fared with the short porch in right. Bowman got the start for the home side and Williams singled in the second, walked in the third, flied to left in the fifth, and grounded to second in the eighth. (He got another single in the ninth off reliever Al Gettel.) The Giants lefty struck out nine Red Sox in eight innings in the free-swinging affair (Dom DiMaggio twice and Vern Stephens thrice).

The nadir of Bowman’s season came on June 17 at Forbes Field, as he got the start in the first game of a doubleheader. He struck out the first two batters he faced but failed to get out of the inning, as a pair of singles and a walk loaded the bases before Danny Murtaugh’s double cleared them. Durocher yanked Bowman, who took the loss, and the manager didn’t survive much longer himself, getting tossed in the second inning.

The Giants brought up Frank Hardy from Ottawa of the International League the next day, sending Bowman down in his place.

The southpaw responded by throwing a one-hitter (a second-inning single) in Baltimore against the Orioles, during which he walked two and struck out eight in a 4-0 shutout.

On July 9, the parent club was in Ottawa for an exhibition and Bowman got the start and defeated his former teammates. After the game, Giants general manager Charlie Stoneham transferred Bowman to Minneapolis of the American Association. He went 5-3 with the Millers through the rest of the 1951 season, following the daily progress of the dramatic pennant race through the newspapers instead of on the field.

The Giants had Bowman stay with the parent club after spring training in 1952, but he failed to get through the third inning of an April start against the Braves. (He was yanked with a 2-and-0 count on Sid Gordon after giving up a single and a walk in the inning after having allowed four singles and two runs in the second.) On May 6 he worked two-thirds of an inning in middle relief, giving up a single and two walks. He hit the Cardinals’ Solly Hemus with a pitch that would turn out to be the last he’d ever throw as a Giant.

On May 14 Durocher sent the hurler to Minneapolis. The skipper said Bowman, still just 24 years old, needed to do more work before he could be a regular.

Bowman pitched in six games with the Millers before being included in a three-for-one trade to Oakland of the Pacific Coast League. He arrived complaining of a sore left shoulder with X-rays showing a calcium deposit.

Nonetheless, Bowman barely had time to meet his new teammates before he threw a no-hitter against the Hollywood Stars. The lefty was perfect through five innings before issuing a walk to open the sixth. He also issued passes in the eighth and ninth innings, facing only 29 batters, only one of whom managed to hit a ball as far as the outfield. Overall Bowman went 7-5 in 17 starts for the Oaks.

Late in the season, Bowman was at the center of a rhubarb with the Hollywood Stars. After a second pitch came uncomfortably close to the head of Jim Mangan, the batter charged the mound. “The pair mixed, clinching and pummeling each other, until they were pulled apart as tenants of both dugouts swarmed on the field,” The Sporting News reported.9 Mangan got tossed, but Bowman continued throwing warmups as both managers (Fred Haney for Hollywood and Mel Ott for Bowman’s Oaks) argued for about 20 minutes. Finally, Bowman was ordered from the field. As he left, he threw the ball over the grandstand roof before charging at umpire Roman Bentz. He was intercepted by several teammates and pitching coach Augie Galan, who accidentally spiked the pitcher in the dustup. Mangan and Bowman were each fined $75.

In May 1953 the Pittsburgh Pirates claimed Bowman on waivers from the Giants. He pitched in 30 games for the Bucs, all but two in relief, including closing out 15. He went 0-4 with a 4.82 earned-run average in 65⅓ innings pitched. That fall he was traded to Hollywood for home run-hitting first baseman Dale Long. Five days later, while hunting near Otter Lake in the Adirondacks, Bowman accidentally shot himself in his pitching arm with a shotgun. He was treated at Albany Hospital.

Bowman went on to lead the PCL in victories in 1954 with 22 against 13 losses for Hollywood. He had 165 strikeouts while issuing 99 walks. The 22nd victory was also the most impressive — a seven-inning perfect game against Portland in which only one ball was hit to the outfield, a routine fly to left. It was only the third perfect game in PCL history with the other two also seven-inning affairs. The win in the nightcap of a doubleheader tied Bowman’s Stars with San Diego for the pennant, which the latter would win, by 7-2 in a one-game playoff.
Bowman opened the 1955 season with the parent Pirates, making two starts and five relief appearances. On May 22 the Giants, his old team, touched him for 10 hits over eight innings in a 5-2 win at Forbes Field, as Bowman dropped to 0-3. He never pitched again in the majors. He went 5-10 with Hollywood over the remainder of the campaign.

Bowman’s final six seasons of professional ball saw him throwing for the Millers, the Buffalo Bisons, the Sacramento Solons, the Louisville Colonels, and the Portland Beavers before he joined the expansion Hawaii Islanders as an assistant manager to Tommy Heath. (Heath had been his manager in Trenton in 1947.) Bowman appeared in seven games in fill-in duty, pitching five innings and emerging with a 1-0 record for his 131st career minor-league victory against 119 losses.

Later that season, Bowman turned up in his hometown pitching for the Amsterdam Textiles, a semipro team sponsored by the Textile Workers Union and whose other starting pitcher was Tom McMullen, a right-hander who had spent five seasons in the Brooklyn Dodgers system.

Over the years, items appeared in the sports pages declaring that Bowman could make a living as a professional musician, especially on the saxophone, as he performed with big bands at Caroga Lake, a summer resort town in the Adirondacks. It was said that Bowman had once even sat in with Tommy Dorsey.

While playing baseball, Bowman completed an arts degree at Colgate. He later completed an education degree at the University of California at Los Angeles. He operated an eponymous upholstery business in Santa Monica for 45 years. The business had two partners, Leo Ummard, a German whom he helped immigrate, and George Mockry, an old school friend. Bowman handled the books.

A pilot, Bowman served as president of the Air-Spacers Flying Club, based at Santa Monica Airport, and he also moonlighted as an aviation instructor for 20 years.

Bowman’s father died in Amsterdam on April 19, 1982, and his mother died on March 25, 1997. She was 99 and had been resident of a nursing home for three years. Four months later, Bowman himself died in Los Angeles on July 21, 1997. He was 69. He left his wife of 12 years, Nancy (Watson) Bowman. He was also survived by a son, two daughters, a stepson and a stepdaughter. He is buried in a family plot with his mother and father at Hagaman Mills Cemetery in Amsterdam, New York.

Notes

1 Jeff Moshier, “Playing Square,” Evening Independent, (St. Petersburg, Florida), June 13, 1944, 12.

2 Sam Chase, “Clubhouse Interviews,” Billboard, May 26, 1951, 8.

3  Sam Chase, “Bowman, Giant Cast-Off, Hurls No-Hitter on Coast,” New York Times, July 5, 1952.

4  Sam Chase, “Rookie Halts Durocher’s Effort to Change Windup,” The Sporting News, March 15, 1950.

5 Sam Chase, “Bowman Seeks Diploma on Installment Basis,” Schenectady (New York) Gazette, January 30, 1952.

6  Ken Smith, “Giants Urged to Remember Their Comeback Late in ’50,” The Sporting News, March 28, 1951, 23.

7  John Drebinger, “Phils Win, 6 to 4, Facing 6 Hurlers,” New York Times, April 25, 1951.   

8   Roscoe McGowen, “Tenth Loss in a Row,” New York Times, April 29, 1951.

9  Sam Schnitzer, “Stars and Oaks Tangle in Mass Ruckus When Batter and Hurler Swap Punches,” The Sporting News, September 24, 1952.

Few jobs can match the excitement, adulation, and income that come with a spot on a major-league roster.  Some old ballplayers inevitably seal themselves in amber, forever living vicariously through the men they used to be.  The New York Giants’ Al Corwin was different.  For him the game was “more paycheck than passion,” as one author put it.1  When it was done, it was done.  Although Corwin’s pitching rėsumė was admirable by any measure, he moved on without regret and forged a career in business that far exceeded any heights he had achieved on the diamond.

Elmer Nathan “Al” Corwin, Jr. was born on December 3, 1926, in Newburgh, New York, a prospering industrial town about 60 miles up the Hudson River from New York City.  He came from a line of successful small-town entrepreneurs; his grandfather operated a grocery store, while his father, Elmer Sr., founded a bus line shortly after World War I in the nearby town of Modena.  Later his father owned a silk mill and a small hotel and, like many leading citizens of his day, was involved in fraternal organizations like the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the Elks. 

Al’s mother, Sarah, attended a business college and worked as a stenographer for a time.  According to his older sister, Harriet Conklin, their mother was exceptionally patient and easygoing.  “I don’t think we were ever really punished,” she said.2  Elmer and Sarah divorced when their son was 10.  Although the trauma of a divorce can leave lasting scars on a child, Corwin apparently weathered it as well as could be expected.  He had a large network of aunts and uncles nearby, and they provided critical emotional support. 

Al was one of those special kids who seemed to excel at anything he did.  His sister described him as “the marbles champion of Newburgh.”3  He also won a local speed-skating title and played four sports in high school.  In his senior year at Wallkill High in Modena, “Junior Corwin,” as the local newspaper dubbed him, pitched his club to the North Orange Southern Ulster League championship.4

Upon graduation in 1944, Corwin, eager to join the war effort, signed up for the Naval Air Corps.  Over the next 26 months, while stationed in San Diego and Panama, he flew reconnaissance missions on a seaplane, scouring the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico for enemy submarines lurking off the coast.  After mustering out of the Navy in 1946 he remained out west and attended Pasadena City College (Jackie Robinson’s alma mater) on the GI Bill while toiling in a grocery store to pay the bills.

Although he was a good high-school pitcher, Corwin gave little thought to playing professionally.  When the college’s baseball coach asked him to go out for the team in the spring, he showed up, twirled three no-hit innings in an exhibition game, and then walked away.  “I was working from 8 to 4, attending night school, and only had an hour and a half daily to myself,” Corwin told a sportswriter. “He even offered to find me some little job that’d pay my expenses, but I saw nothing in baseball for me and turned him down.”5 

Still, the game wouldn’t let him go that easily.  In October Corwin’s roommate told him about a tryout camp the New York Giants were running just down the road in Monrovia, California.  On a whim, he gave it a shot.  Even though he had grown three inches in the service, he still wasn’t much to look at — a spindly 6-feet-1 and 160 pounds.  But he threw hard and he threw strikes, and scout Mickey Schrader saw enough potential to sign him to a contract for the 1948 season.

Elmer Sr., ever the businessman, was appalled.  “My father said, ‘Don’t you read the papers?  Do you mean to say you signed up without a bonus?’  It had all happened so fast I hadn’t thought about money.”6

The 21-year-old side-arming right-hander began his professional career in the Class C Sunset League at Reno (where he drove the team bus for an extra $25 a month).   On the surface, he enjoyed a brilliant year, racking up a league-leading 26 wins against just nine losses with an ERA of 3.54, third-best in the circuit.  Home plate was a moving target sometimes; he walked an average of five men per nine innings pitched.  But his 251 strikeouts in 280 innings suggest that when he got the ball over, he was tough to beat.

Class C baseball, though, was supposed to be a training ground; the Reno ballclub let Corwin get by on raw ability.  “No one really taught me much,” he said. “Tommy Lloyd, the manager … told me to concentrate on controlling my fastball.”7  That wasn’t bad advice as far as it went; however, what Corwin also needed was a secondary pitch, something he could mix in with his heater.  He didn’t pick that up at Reno.  In fact, he really never developed a changeup or breaking ball that he could rely on.

Nevertheless, Corwin proceeded stepwise through the Giants’ chain, ascending to Class B Trenton in 1949 (15-11 with a 3.03 ERA) and then to Class A Jacksonville, where he got smacked around a bit in 1950 (9-18 with a 4.57 ERA).  Despite those ugly numbers, the Giants promoted Corwin to Ottawa of the International League, where he opened 1951 in the bullpen.  He continued to struggle until manager Hugh Poland moved him into the rotation in June.

It wasn’t long before the parent club, in second place but well behind Brooklyn, found itself desperate for a jump-start and in search of a fresh arm.  After an exhibition game in Ottawa in July, manager Leo Durocher asked his pitching coach, Frank Shellenback, to stay behind for a few days and see if anyone caught his eye. 

Shellenback observed Corwin during a start against the Brooklyn Dodgers’ International League club, the Montreal Royals.  It was the first time he had seen Corwin throw, but the young man passed all the tests.  “The first thing I liked about him was his fastball.  It was alive,” Shellenback raved.  “Then I liked the way he fought back when he was hit. … You can learn more about a pitcher when he is in a jam than you can when everything is breaking right for him.”8  When the two men spoke after the game, Corwin further impressed the old coach with his poise and intelligence.  Shellenback reported back that he had found his man.

The recommendation raised some eyebrows among the Giants brass. Although he sported an outstanding 2.47 ERA, Corwin’s record was just 2-4; the safer choice would have been Alex Konikowski, who was pitching well and had already appeared in 22 games for New York in 1948.  However, Shellenback was convinced that Corwin could get through the league a couple of times before opposing hitters adjusted to his side-arm delivery.   On July 18 Poland pulled the 24-year-old Corwin aside and informed him that he had gotten the call. 

Corwin hastily crammed his glove, jockstrap, shoes, and underwear into a duffel bag, left his ’47 Pontiac with a teammate, and hustled to the airport. A thunderstorm forced his plane to touch down in Albany at 1:00 A.M., so he didn’t arrive at LaGuardia Airport until late the next morning.  When he did, he discovered that the airline had lost his bag. 

Exhausted, Corwin dragged himself into a cab for a short ride across the rain-slicked Triborough Bridge to the Polo Grounds, where clubhouse man Eddie Logan awaited.  The next hassle was finding a uniform that fit; Corwin’s waist was 31 inches — even the smallest thing on Logan’s rack billowed like a tent.  With that day’s scheduled doubleheader washed out, Logan took time to introduce the newest Giant to his teammates and manager.  Corwin long remembered his first whiff of Durocher’s Fabergė cologne — the heady scent that, in his mind, forever symbolized New York and the big time.

As it happened, that also was the day when Durocher first revealed to the club that an electrician had rigged up a primitive device that would enable the Giants to steal the opposing catcher’s signs and then relay them to the hitters.  Yet despite this frenzied, bizarre introduction to the major leagues, Corwin was unfazed.  “He just kind of rolled with it,” said Joshua Prager, who interviewed Corwin nine times while researching his book, The Echoing Green.  “The fact that Durocher was this incredibly foul-mouthed guy, he got a kick out of it.  Oh, well, here we are in Gotham and they steal signs here?  That’s interesting.  My jersey doesn’t quite fit me?  Well, that’s OK.”9

Durocher gave Corwin the ball on July 25 in Pittsburgh.  He blanked the Pirates on three hits through six innings in his debut before hitting the wall in the seventh.  “I wasn’t nervous but I got tired.”  As fatigue set in, he elevated his pitches.  After back-to-back singles to lead off the seventh, Joe Garagiola homered to tie the game, and one batter later Corwin was gone.  Two starts later, on August 1, he was able to finish the job, scattering seven hits in a 2-0 shutout of the Cubs and leaving Chicago manager Phil Cavarretta impressed.  “He’s faster than [Sal] Maglie.”10

Corwin made five starts and four relief appearances during that fateful August and was effective nearly every time out.  He went 5-0 with one save and a 2.27 ERA that month, including a pair of complete-game victories over the Cubs and one over the Phillies.  He played a huge role in New York’s 16-game winning streak, which slashed the Dodgers’ lead from 13 games down to five in the span of just two weeks.

Durocher called Corwin “the coolest kid I’ve ever seen come up,”11 and predicted, “This kid is going to be a great pitcher.  Nothing bothers him.”12  An unnamed teammate suggested that the youngster’s self-assurance had rubbed off on the entire club, saying, “He was the only one attending to his business without any extra worries.  Everyone has become like Al Corwin and loosened up.”13  In reality, Corwin was no less jittery and emotional than any other rookie in his spot would have been; he just concealed it better than most.  “[I am] so damn happy about winning up here,” he exclaimed to a reporter in a moment of candor.  “Excited inside, you know what I mean?”14 

Corwin pitched poorly in a 6-3 loss to the Phillies on September 3, his only defeat of the season.  From that point on, Durocher used him sparingly, instead leaning heavily on his core of three veteran starters — Maglie, Larry Jansen, and Jim Hearn — as New York finally caught Brooklyn on the next-to-last day of the regular season and then beat them in a best-of-three playoff on Bobby Thomson’s historic home run. 

Corwin’s only appearance in the Giants’ six-game World Series loss to the New York Yankees came in mopup duty in Game Five. He inherited a bases-loaded, one-out mess in the seventh inning with his club down 10-1.  After unleashing a wild pitch and surrendering a two-run double to Joe DiMaggio, he settled down to pitch a 1-2-3 eighth.

The offseason was an eventful and life-changing one for Corwin.  His father had been hospitalized with stomach ulcers throughout the World Series and died on October 18 as a result of complications from surgery.   A much happier day came shortly thereafter, when he met a woman named Patricia McMahon at the Hotel Newburgh.  That was where she and her mother had lunch every Wednesday.  She had no idea that Corwin was a ballplayer but her father, a die-hard Dodgers fan, knew the name all too well and was eager to meet the young man.  Al and Pat soon were engaged, and were married January 25, 1953, in Newburgh.

Corwin arrived at spring training in Phoenix in 1952 determined to master a curveball, but opposing batters teed off on him.   The Giants optioned him to Triple-A Minneapolis, where his struggles continued.  The right-field fence at the Millers’ Nicollet Park loomed just 279 feet from home plate, and he let that get into his head.  “Corwin tried to get the batters to hit away from the wall and found himself changing his whole style of pitching,” according to Giants scout Tom Sheehan. “The kid got so fouled up that he lost his control, walked a lot of people, and was frequently in trouble.”15  

Corwin’s record was just 8-11 but he did lead the American Association in strikeouts into August.  That was sufficient to earn a recall to New York to take some of the bullpen load off an overburdened Hoyt Wilhelm.  Corwin again pitched extremely well in a tense pennant race — 6-1 with a pair of saves and a 2.66 ERA in 21 games, including seven starts — although this time the Giants couldn’t quite catch the Dodgers. 

That good work was not good enough for Durocher, though, who, in the words of Joe King of the New York World-Telegram, “treats Corwin as a precocious child who has not quite lived up to papa’s expectations.”16   Durocher always had his favorites.  Corwin was not one of them, which perhaps is not surprising.  The men had as much in common as a sewing machine and a tomato — Corwin was composed and thoughtful; Durocher, a high-living, libidinous hustler.   The skipper wasn’t shy with his criticism.   “[W]hen I farmed him down early this year, I told him to develop another pitch and he didn’t do that.  He’d be twice as good with a surprise pitch to throw in with that curve and fastball.”17  Moreover, he was constantly harping on the slender Corwin’s perceived lack of stamina.  “Even when he relieves he needs two days’ rest” — an odd remark coming from the man who sent Corwin to the hill six times in seven days following his recall in 1952.18

Corwin conceded the point about his repertoire.  “I know my shortcomings as a pitcher,” he offered to a reporter in the offseason.  “I’ve only begun to learn this trade.  I’m chiefly a thrower now.  Perhaps in the majors I have won because there’s been great fielding behind me and good catching back of the plate.”19

Corwin was with the Giants throughout all of 1953, his only full season in the major leagues. He worked mostly out of the bullpen but, despite a 6-4 record, was not terribly effective.  His 4.98 ERA was well above the league average and he walked more people than he struck out.  The season did yield one moment that Corwin would crow about for years — a home run he hit against Brooklyn, the second of back-to-back-to-back round-trippers off the Dodgers’ Russ Meyer. (Corwin was a fine athlete.  He handled the bat well, especially in the minors, and Durocher frequently employed him as a pinch-runner.)

It was around this time that Corwin’s shoulder began to go bad.  “No papers reported my arm troubles and in those days, no one complained,” he said. “We just kept pitching.”20 He again split the 1954 and ’55 seasons between Minneapolis, where he was mostly a starter, and New York, where he had become exclusively a reliever.  He pitched just 20 times for the Giants in 1954, going 1-3 with a 4.02 ERA, and did not appear in their four-game World Series sweep of the Cleveland Indians.  At the start of 1955, Durocher seemed even more exasperated with him than usual:  “How can I count on Corwin?  He is never ready.  If he hasn’t got something wrong with him he has something else wrong with him.  When is he ready to pitch?”21 Laboring through the pain that season, Corwin was hit hard at Minneapolis and made just 13 appearances with New York.

The sun was beginning to set.  Corwin underwent shoulder surgery in the spring of 1956 and was never the same.  The Giants finally gave up on him in May 1957, setting him off on a 3½-year Triple-A odyssey that took him from the Orioles system to the Tigers chain and finally to the Kansas City Athletics organization.  He went 12-8 for two clubs in 1958 and 10-12 with a respectable 3.63 ERA for Dallas in the American Association in 1959, but by this point his flaming fastball was gone, along with his chances of ever making it back to the bigs.  Weary of moving and with his son approaching school age, the 33-year-old Corwin called it a career at the conclusion of the 1960 season.  He finished with a major-league record of 18-10 and a solid 3.98 ERA in 117 games.

Naturally, it was disappointing for Corwin to walk away from the game, but according to his wife, Pat, he knew it was time. “It wasn’t something he lost sleep over,” she said. “He just wasn’t like that.”22  Yet, it took him a while to figure out the next chapter.  He wasn’t trained to do anything other than throw a baseball.  His father-in-law’s company hired him for some construction work, but Corwin quickly decided the best way to move on was to get out of New York:  “I didn’t care to live in my hometown where everybody greeted me each morning with, ‘Gee, if you hadn’t hurt your arm and needed that operation, just think how long you could have played.’”23  

Instead, the Corwins relocated to Southern California, where Al took a sales position with the spirits company Seagram’s.  It was the kind of job coveted by former athletes and it certainly gave him some valuable experience.  Unfortunately, the work basically required him to sit in bars half the night, spinning yarns about the good old days.  That wasn’t his scene. 

In 1963 he got another sales gig, this one with faucet manufacturer Moen, where he promoted the brand to contractors who specialized in large-scale new-home development.  Corwin had a likeable, trustworthy personality.  He loved meeting people, taking them out on the golf course, and getting to know them.  These traits made him a gifted and highly successful salesman.  Moen transferred him to Chicago in 1969, elevated him to regional manager, and put him in charge of sales for 11 Midwestern states.

Corwin’s reputation spread through the industry, and in 1977 he was lured away by a competitor, German-based Grohe.  As president of Grohe America, Corwin helped to introduce the brand to the already-crowded US market.  Grohe was selling high-end stuff in an era when most Americans perceived kitchen and bath fixtures as commodities; it would not be an easy road and it required a huge shift in consumer thinking.  “The presidents of two major faucet companies told me I had made the mistake of my life,” Corwin remembered.  “Nobody sold expensive faucets in those days.”24 

When Corwin assumed the presidency, US sales were virtually nil.  But over the next 18 years, thanks to his strategic acumen and preternatural marketing instincts, Corwin established Grohe as the Mercedes-Benz of faucets — a high-end product born of high-quality German engineering.  He also made significant inroads into Canada and pushed through construction of a 90,000-square-foot office, manufacturing, and warehouse complex in Bloomingdale, Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs.  By the time his successor, Bob Atkins, stepped down in 2004, Grohe America was the corporation’s leading subsidiary in the world.  “We used all of what Al taught me and expanded it,” according to Atkins.  “We made the headquarters a lot of money, but it was all because of him.”25  Corwin came to be regarded as a visionary.  A 2004 publication named him one of the industry’s top innovators of the previous 50 years, alongside such recognizable names as Albert Moen, Herbert Kohler, Jr., and Roy Jacuzzi.26

Corwin was a beloved figure at Grohe America.  He looked out for his people, instituting a generous pension plan and a smorgasbord of perks.  At sales meetings he was the head cheerleader.  “When he spoke, you listened,” declared Atkins.  “He believed in what he said, and he was going to lead you.  You knew he would be right there in front of you.”27  If one of his people had a concern, Corwin was not hard to find.  He visited the shipping dock all the time and ate his brown-bag lunch alongside everyone else in the employee cafeteria.  At the same time he cut an imposing figure, an attractive dark-haired man with a stentorian voice, immaculately dressed every day, his big 1954 World Series ring glimmering on his left hand. 

The unflappable demeanor for which Corwin was known during his playing days served him well as a Grohe executive.  His life there was an unending series of battles with his belligerent bosses.  “Al taught me to insulate the employees, the sales reps, and our customers from the German headquarters,” said Atkins.  “They were very abusive.  They would scream and holler and yell on the last day of every month because they wanted more business.  Then you had to turn around and face everybody in the United States and say everything is great; they love us.  You can’t imagine what it was like.”28

Corwin didn’t talk about his baseball days unless someone asked him, which people seldom did.  But they knew.  Atkins recalls inviting Corwin to play catch at a company picnic.  It had been years since he had picked up a ball, but he still had the touch.  “He wound up and threw a ball and almost knocked me on my rear end.  No one could believe he could throw a ball that hard.”  At his retirement party, Corwin got a chuckle out of a card created by one of his staff.  On one side was an image of George Washington with a Grohe faucet in his hand; on the other side was a reproduction of one of Corwin’s old baseball cards, with the caption, “Our Founding Father.”

Corwin retired in 1996, although he attended Grohe sales meetings for a couple of years afterward simply because people still wanted to see him.  He and Pat split their time between a condo in Florida and their longtime home in Geneva, Illinois (an abode that Atkins described as, “Absolutely immaculate.  I mean, impeccable.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a house like his”).29  He was on the tennis court and the golf course constantly and was a major fundraiser for some nonprofits, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  Corwin was not sentimental about baseball.  He didn’t stay in touch with many former teammates and wasn’t big on saving memorabilia, but he was thrilled when the Giants flew him and all of his living 1951 teammates to San Francisco for a reunion in 2002.

In the early 2000s, Corwin’s dermatologist discovered a worrisome growth on his right shoulder.  A biopsy revealed that it was malignant, and further tests showed the cancer already had spread to his lymph nodes.  Corwin had blue eyes and fair skin.  When he was a kid, he spent a lot of time outdoors without a shirt, and his shoulders often were sunburned in the summer.  The doctors figured that that might have been when the melanoma time bomb had begun to tick. 

Fortunately, Corwin was active and feeling energetic almost right to the end.  It was only in the final couple of months that his health took a sudden turn for the worse.  In his last weeks, he had come to grips with his fate, but the toughest part was the sense of isolation.  He was such a people person, but he couldn’t bear for old friends and colleagues to see him so sick.  Corwin died at home in Geneva on October 23, 2003, at the age of 76.  He was survived by his wife of 50 years; his son, Glen; his daughter, Nancy; his sister; and a stepbrother. 

Corwin’s memorial service was packed to overflowing, with mourners who couldn’t squeeze in left to linger in the parking lot.    Interestingly enough, Bob Atkins’ eulogy mentioned nothing about baseball.  Rather, he focused on the soul of the man.  “He was your best friend and he’d give you the shirt off his back.  And if you watched, listened, and paid attention, you could learn more from Al than any ten people I know.  He was one of those very special people. … I’ll never forget him.”30

The author thanks Gabriel Schechter of Cherry Valley, New York, and the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands for their assistance.

Sources

Fehler, Gene, When Baseball Was Still King: Major League Players Remember the 1950s (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012).

Prager, Joshua, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, and the Shot Heard Round the World (New York: Pantheon, 2006).

Rosenfeld, Harvey, The Great Chase: The Dodgers-Giants Pennant Race (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse, Inc., 2001).

Thomson, Bobby, with Lee Heiman and Bill Gutman; The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant!: The Amazing 1951 National League Season and the Home Run That Won it All (New York: Zebra Books, Kensington Publishing Group, 1991).

Chicago Tribune

Hudson Valley News

New York Journal-American

New York Post

New York World-Telegram

Newburgh (New York) News

Baseball Digest

Contractor

The Sporting News

Supply House Times

Baseball-Reference.com

Bob Atkins personal files, transcript of eulogy, November 1, 2003.

Bob Atkins, telephone interview with author, January 13, 2014.

Harriet Conklin, telephone interview with author, November 25, 2013.

Patricia Corwin, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2013.

Joshua Prager, telephone interview with author, December 19, 2013.

Notes

1] Joshua Prager, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, and the Shot Heard Round the World, 28.

2 Harriet Conklin, telephone interview with author, November 25, 2013.

3 Conklin interview.

4 Newburgh News, June 17, 1944.

5 Baseball Digest, February 1953.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 New York Journal-American, March 13, 1952.

9 Joshua Prager, telephone interview with author, December 19, 2013.

10 Harvey Rosenfeld, The Great Chase: The Dodgers-Giants Pennant Race, 41.

11 The Sporting News, September 5, 1951.

12 New York Post, August 13, 1951.

13 Rosenfeld, 41.

14 New York World-Telegram, August 13, 1951.

15 New York Journal-American, August 13, 1952.

16 New York World-Telegram, August 11, 1952.

17 Ibid.

18 New York World-Telegram, August 18, 1953.

19 Baseball Digest, February 1953.

20 Gene Fehler, When Baseball was Still King: Major League Players Remember the 1950s, 31.

21 New York World-Telegram, April 8, 1955.

22 Patricia Corwin, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2013.

23 Supply House Times, April 1995.

24 Ibid.

25 Bob Atkins, telephone interview with author, January 13, 2014.

26 Contractor, July 2004.

27 Atkins interview.

28 Atkins interview.

29 Atkins interview.

30 Bob Atkins personal files, transcript of eulogy, November 1, 2003.

President John F. Kennedy was said to have correctly answered a trivia question that had been floating around for years: Who is the only man to ever hit a home run off Sandy Koufax and catch a pass from Y.A. Tittle? The guess was always Alvin Dark. “It’s not quite accurate, however,” Dark always said. “Tittle played at LSU after I did.”1

That JFK’s answer was presumed true said it all about Dark – a terrific three-sport athlete at Louisiana State University who in baseball excelled at each phase of the game. Joe DiMaggio called him the “Red Rolfe type of hitter,” meaning that he was ideal for the No. 2 spot, the type of batter who could “bunt or drag, hit behind the runner, or push the ball to the opposite field.”2

One of the best shortstops in Giants history, Dark played in 14 major-league seasons with the Boston Braves, New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and Philadelphia Phillies before returning to the Braves, then in Milwaukee, to finish his career. A three-time All-Star, he started at shortstop for the National League in the 1951 and ’54 contests. He was 24 years old when he broke into the big leagues with the Boston Braves on July 14, 1946, but was already nationally known for his collegiate exploits on the diamond and gridiron. A lifetime .289 hitter with 126 home runs and 757 RBIs, Dark, nicknamed the Swamp Fox, played on pennant winners with the 1948 Braves and ’51 Giants, and also helped win a World Series title for New York in 1954. He was the Rookie of the Year in 1948 and was captain of the strong Giants teams of the 1950s.

Dark also had a successful managing career. He won a pennant with the 1962 San Francisco Giants just after his playing days, a world championship with the Oakland A’s in 1974, and a division title for the A’s in 1975. Accordingly, he became the first man to manage All-Star teams for both leagues: the National League in 1963 and the American League in 1975. It was not quite a Hall of Fame career either on the field or in the dugout, but Dark was still one of the few men to reach the top of the heap in both roles.

Born on January 7, 1922, in Comanche, Oklahoma, Alvin Ralph Dark was the third of four children born to Ralph and Cordia Dark. Ralph was a drilling supervisor for the Magnolia Oil Company and a part-time barber. An amateur baseball star, he declined an opportunity to play in the Texas League to marry Cordia. Work brought the family, which also included son Lanier and daughters Margaret and Juanita, to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Young Alvin battled malaria and diphtheria as a child, rendering him unable to attend school until he was 7. His athletic career blossomed at Lake Charles High School, where he made all-state and all-Southern football teams as a football tailback; and his skills as a basketball guard were superlative enough to earn him the team captaincy. Lake Charles High lacked a baseball team, and Alvin played American Legion ball.

Dark reconsidered a basketball scholarship from Texas A&M University to play football at Louisiana State in 1940. Playing halfback as a sophomore for the Tigers in 1942, he carried 60 times for 433 yards and a 7.2-yard rushing average. He also played basketball and baseball for LSU that year, lettering in all three sports.

With World War II raging, Dark in 1943 joined the Marine Corps’ V-12 program, which allowed him to continue his education for another year. The Marines sent him to the Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette, where he played for the greatest football team in the school’s history. Undefeated at 4-0-1 (most Southern schools did not play a full schedule during the war), SLI beat Arkansas A&M University 24-7 to capture the inaugural Oil Bowl. In that game, played in Houston, Dark ran for a touchdown, passed for another from his tailback slot, and kicked three extra points and a field goal.3

In addition to playing football in the 1943-44 school year, Dark was a member of SLI’s track, basketball, baseball, and even golf teams. His Marine V-12 obligations prevented him from playing the entire baseball season, but he made the most of his limited at-bats, going 12-for-26 (.462). After completing basic training at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune, Dark was commissioned at Quantico in January 1945 and was destined for service in the Pacific Theater. As he awaited orders at Pearl Harbor, he tried out for the Marine Corps baseball team, earning a berth on the lower-division squad.

In the end Dark never saw combat, but he still faced a pretty dicey situation. After the declaration of an Allied victory in the summer of 1945, he was sent to China that December to support the Nationalists against the Communists. He was dispatched to an outpost south of Peking (now Beijing) to guard the railroad and help transfer supplies to another station. Although his platoon did not know it, they had to pass through a Communist-controlled town to complete their mission. “Our group ran the supply line for four months before being relieved,” said Dark. “A month after I got back to the United States, I received word that the Marines who took our place were ambushed in the Communist town and massacred.”4

When he returned home to Lake Charles, Dark learned that he had been drafted to play pro football for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. His first love was baseball, however, and Ted McGrew, a scout for the Boston Braves, had been watching Dark play in college. McGrew, who had helped engineer the trade of Pee Wee Reese from the Red Sox to the Dodgers, admired young Dark for his tenacity and competitive spirit in all sports. Spurning reported interest from several clubs, Dark signed with the Braves for $50,000: a $45,000 bonus and $5,000 to complete the season with Boston. The date was July 4, 1946.

Dark’s obligations to the Marines prevented him from joining the Braves until July 14. That day, in the second game of a doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field, he pinch-ran for catcher Don Padgett in the ninth inning of a 5-2 loss. A month later, on August 8, Dark got his first hit, a double off Phillies’ pitcher Lefty Hoerst at Philadelphia. Once again the Braves were defeated, as the Phillies triumphed, 9-8.

Dark played 15 games for the fourth-place Braves in 1946. Although he had just three hits in 13 at-bats, all were doubles – a nice harbinger of things to come (he wound up hitting 358 big league two-baggers). At spring training in 1947, Dark pleaded with manager Billy Southworth to retain him as a regular player. Southworth preferred to keep veteran Sibby Sisti as his starting shortstop, however, and optioned Dark to Milwaukee.

That summer, his only season in the minors, Dark hit .303 with 10 home runs, 7 triples, 49 doubles, 186 hits, and 66 RBIs. He earned American Association honors as All-Star shortstop and Rookie of the Year, and finished third in the Most Valuable Player balloting. Playing for manager Nick Cullop, Dark led the league in at-bats, runs, putouts, assists, and, dubiously, errors. His fielding, however, was considered solid; while not the flashiest of shortstops, he had good range and would become a good double-play man.

After the 1947 season Dark returned to Southwest Louisiana Institute to complete his degree in physical education. Although he wanted to compete in collegiate athletics, his request was denied because he had signed a professional contract. He did, however, serve briefly as the football coach’s athletic assistant.

Dark made the Opening Day varsity for the Braves in 1948, but was relegated to the bench as veteran Sisti continued as the regular shortstop. Nevertheless, Dark persevered. His contributions as a reserve player eventually won him the starting job, and he wound up fourth in the National League in batting with a .322 average. He contributed 3 home runs, 39 doubles (third in the NL), and 48 RBIs from his No. 2 spot in the order, while fielding his position strongly (a .963 fielding mark, well above the league average). Initially, his tenure in 1946 disqualified him from the Rookie of the Year ballot. However, the Baseball Writers Association of America ruled that year that players with 25 games or less in previous seasons would qualify for the ballot. This allowed Dark to win Rookie of the Year honors for 1948, the last season both leagues combined to acknowledge one freshman player. He also finished third in the vote for NL Most Valuable Player, but was a letdown in his first World Series by batting just .167 with one double in 24 at-bats. The Braves lost to the Cleveland Indians in six games.

Dark’s outstanding rookie campaign was augmented by the exploits of his keystone partner, second baseman Eddie Stanky. Known as “The Brat,” Stanky had been traded to the Braves by the Dodgers during spring training. Not only were Dark and Stanky a great double-play combination for years to come, but they became close friends and roommates. Dark considered Stanky and Danny Murtaugh as his greatest mentors; as Dark remarked in his autobiography, “Stanky knew so much more about the game than anybody else. If there were ten possible percentage plays to make, most guys would know four or five. Stanky would know ten.”5

Their strong double-play duo notwithstanding, the Braves had a disappointing 1949. They fell to 75 wins against 79 losses, good for just fourth place. Dark’s batting average fell as well – to .276.

Just behind the Braves in the 1949 standings were the New York Giants, who finished a pedestrian fifth place at 73-81. New York manager Leo Durocher and team president Horace Stoneham attributed the shortcoming to inadequate speed and defense. To improve in these areas, the Giants traded outfielders Willard Marshall and Sid Gordon, shortstop Buddy Kerr, and pitcher Sam Webb to the Braves on December 14 for Dark and Stanky. The blockbuster deal was panned in Gotham, as the trade cost the Giants power hitters Marshall and Gordon – the latter a particularly strong fan favorite as one of the league’s foremost Jewish sluggers. Fans at the Polo Grounds were also initially lukewarm to accepting Stanky, as he had previously played for the archrival Dodgers.

Dark, however, came with no such baggage, and Durocher immediately took to his new shortstop. As Dark later wrote, “Leo stuck by me in the early part of 1950, when I first came to the Giants and couldn’t seem to get started … yet Durocher stood by and kept telling me not to worry, that I would seem to come out of it.”6

Durocher surprised Dark once again that first season by declaring the shortstop his team captain. Most sportswriters assumed that Stanky, not Dark, would get the nod. After all, it was the extroverted Stanky who emulated Durocher, in speaking his mind to the press and in the clubhouse. Yet Leo chose Dark, speculating that the position could easily build confidence in the mild-mannered infielder and help him emerge as a team leader.

“In my first year [as captain], all I did was take the lineup to home plate. After the success we had in 1951, I began taking on some responsibilities – automatic things, like consoling a guy after a bad day. After a while some of the younger players came around, and some of them, like (Willie) Mays, still call me ‘Cap.’”7

In 1950 the Giants improved to third place with a record of 86-68. Playing in all 154 games, Dark batted .279 with 16 homers and 67 RBIs – by far his best power numbers to that point. It was in that season that the Giants made history.

Early in the campaign, the Giants promoted rookie outfielder Willie Mays from Minneapolis, and he was soon dazzling the league with his graceful catches and power. The Giants also boasted clutch-hitting outfielder Monte Irvin, who had 121 RBIs that year, 32-homer man Bobby Thomson in the third outfield slot, and pitchers Sal Maglie and Larry Jansen, each a 23-game winner. Dark, for his part, had a terrific year, hitting .303 with a career-high 196 hits, a league-best 41 doubles, 114 runs scored, and 14 homers. Defensively he led the league with 45 errors at shortstop, but he also was tops in assists (465) and double plays (114) in making his first All-Star team. Still, the Giants trailed the Dodgers by 13½ games as late as August 11. How was anyone to guess that they were about to complete one of the greatest pennant races in baseball history? The Giants won 37 of their last 44 games to tie the Dodgers at the end of the season and force a best-of-three playoff.

In the third game, with the teams tied, 1-1, Brooklyn had a 4-1 lead going into the bottom of the ninth at the Polo Grounds. With Dodgers ace Don Newcombe on the mound, Dark led off the inning with a single off the glove of first baseman Gil Hodges. “I must have fouled off six or seven pitches with two strikes before getting that hit,” Dark recalled.8 Four batters later, after Dark had scored, Bobby Thomson hit his legendary three-run homer to cap the “Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff” and win the pennant, 5-4. Dark hit .417 with three doubles, a home run, and four RBIs in the World Series that followed, but the Yankees reigned supreme, winning in six games.

After the 1951 season, Dark’s friend and teammate Eddie Stanky was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Without this sparkplug, and with Willie Mays in the Army most of the year, the Giants finished 1952 in second place, 4½ games behind the Dodgers. Meanwhile, Durocher had become impressed with farmhand Daryl Spencer, who dazzled at shortstop while playing for Minneapolis. Durocher wanted to play Spencer at shortstop and move Dark to second or third base. Dark expressed his displeasure by intruding on a press conference orchestrated by Durocher. Things smoothed over, however, and Spencer departed for military service after the 1953 season. After his greatest season at the plate, in 1953, batting .300 with 23 home runs and 88 RBIs, Dark emerged as the undisputed shortstop for the New York Giants.

Perhaps the resolution of this conflict helped the club. After a disastrous 1953 season in which the Giants finished fifth, the team went on a roll the next spring. The press began referring to the squad as “Happy Heroes, Inc.,” because they would always find a way to beat you, whether it was a pinch-hit home run or solid pitching.9 Dark was reunited with erstwhile Braves teammate Johnny Antonelli, and the starting pitcher won 21 games after the Giants acquired him in a trade for Bobby Thomson. Center fielder Mays returned from the Army and emerged as a superstar, leading the National League with a .345 average while slugging 41 home runs and driving in 110 runs. The Giants finished five games ahead of the Dodgers, winning the pennant with a record of 97-57.

This time the Giants faced the Cleveland Indians, winners of 111 games, in the World Series. After hitting a solid .293 with 20 home runs and 70 RBIs during the year, Dark had another outstanding postseason with a .412 batting average on seven hits and a walk in 18 plate appearances. Boosted by his output and the incredible pinch-hitting of Dusty Rhodes (two homers, seven RBIs), the Giants surprised by sweeping the Indians. While Mays was the runaway choice as league MVP, Dark finished fifth in the balloting and even got one first-place vote.

An injury-plagued 1955 campaign was Dark’s last full season as a Giant. After fracturing his rib in a game against Cincinnati on August 7, he separated his right shoulder against the Phillies on September 2. Dark’s injuries limited him to 115 games, and he ended the year hitting .282 with 9 homers and 45 RBIs. New York finished 18½ games behind the Dodgers, in third place.

The 1956 season started off dismally for the club, and by early June the Giants were settled into seventh place with a record well under .500. A shakeup was in order, and in an eight-player deal on June 14 the Giants sent Dark, Ray Katt, Don Liddle, and Whitey Lockman to the St. Louis Cardinals for Dick Littlefield, Jackie Brandt, Red Schoendienst, and Bill Sarni. New York wanted a second baseman (Schoendienst), and the Cardinals wanted a shortstop (Dark). It was initially a good move for Dark; the 1957 season, his last as a regular shortstop, was also his final pennant race as a player. He hit .290 as the Cardinals finished in second place, eight games behind the Milwaukee Braves.

Dark now became a third baseman – and a “traveling man.” On May 20, 1958, the Cardinals traded him to the Chicago Cubs for pitcher Jim Brosnan; in his two seasons in Chicago, he hit .295 and .264 while playing alongside another standout shortstop, Ernie Banks. On January 11, 1960, Dark was swapped again, along with pitcher John Buzhardt and infielder Jim Woods, to the dismal Philadelphia Phillies for outfielder Richie Ashburn. Dark’s first hit of the season in Philadelphia’s home opener against the Braves on April 14, 1960, was the 2,000th of his major-league career. He played 53 games at third base (hitting .242) before a June 23 trade for infielder Joe Morgan (later the Boston Red Sox manager) sent him to the Milwaukee Braves. Now 38, he was used primarily as a utility infielder, pinch-hitter, and occasional outfielder. Appearing in 50 games for the second-place Braves, Dark upped his productivity, batting .298 with one homer and 18 RBIs.

Still, it wasn’t long before Dark was sent packing again. On October 31, 1960, he was traded for the sixth and last time when the Braves dealt him to the San Francisco Giants for infielder André Rodgers. With his future uncertain, Dark accepted a sales position with the Magabar Mud Company in Louisiana. He did not peddle mud for long, however, as he was named to replace Tom Sheehan as the Giants manager for 1961.

In his first press conference as skipper, Dark was asked if he retained any memento from the 1951 Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff. “Yeah,” the manager replied humorously. “Willie Mays!”10 He demonstrated very quickly his ability and fortitude to make bold moves with his roster and in game situations, thereby emulating his mentor Leo Durocher. He intended to eliminate any racial cliques by reassigning clubhouse lockers that integrated whites with blacks. “We’re all together and fighting for the same cause. This way we’ll all get to know each other better,” he said. 11 Dark also moved the Giants’ bullpen across the field to better monitor pitchers who might not be focused on the game.

Although Dark earned a reputation for avoiding controversy as a player, he embraced it as a manager. Despite his strong religious views as a Baptist fundamentalist, he was prone to temper tantrums. To ventilate his anger after a 1-0 loss to Philadelphia on June 26, 1961, for instance, he flung a metal stool against the wall. In the process, he lost the tip of his little finger, requiring hospitalization for its repair. “I made up my mind two weeks ago not to take my anger out on the players. So, I guess I took it out on myself tonight,” he said in jest. 12

In his first season as manager, Dark guided the Giants to a third-place finish at 85-69, eight games behind pennant-winning Cincinnati. The next season, 1962, he led the Giants to a sparkling 103-62 record and their first National League championship in San Francisco. Mays, Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey combined to hit 129 homers, and Jack Sanford led the pitching rotation with 24 wins.

The Giants’ 1962 campaign was not without its controversy. Even as West Coast transplants, they retained their rivalry with the Los Angeles Dodgers. LA shortstop Maury Wills was en route to a then-record 104 stolen bases, and according to the Dodgers, the Giants were trying to slow him down. At one point during a three-game series at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in August, the infield was soaking wet around first base. The umpires had no choice but to douse the wet surface with sand, thereby preventing baserunners from stealing. For his alleged role in the situation, Dark earned the nickname “Swamp Fox.” Dark responded to the incident with a “Who, me?” attitude. As he remarked to Baseball Digest some 40 years later, “I just remember that one day they had trouble with a hose that broke.”13

Just as in 1951, the ’62 NL pennant race came down to a tie finish and a three-game playoff with the Dodgers to decide a champion. The Giants triumphed again, and in another ’51 rematch, they faced the Yankees in the World Series. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, sparked the Yankees’ offense, complementing a rotation led by Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry. San Francisco took New York to the limit, but fell 1-0 in Game Seven at Candlestick Park. After this near-miss, the Giants returned to third place under Dark in 1963, posting an 88-74 record to finish 11 games behind Los Angeles.

Dark has been linked to a great urban legend involving Gaylord Perry, who pitched for the Giants’ teams from 1962 to 1964 and was a notoriously weak hitter (.131 career batting average). Dark was said to respond to sportswriter Harry Jupiter’s comments on Perry showing some pop in batting practice by saying, “There would be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry would hit a home run.” Sure enough, on July 20, 1969, Perry hit a home run in the third inning off Dodgers pitcher Claude Osteen. How long the home run came after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface when the home run came is debatable. In any event, Perry hit five more homers before retiring.14

On June 7, 1964, during the last of a three-game series with the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium Dark exemplified why the Bay Area had dubbed him the “Mad Genius” when he used four pitchers in the first inning. 15 He sent starter Bob Henley to the showers for surrendering two runs without retiring a batter, and when reliever Bob Bolin walked one man, he, too, was replaced, by Ken MacKenzie. MacKenzie retired a pinch-hitter before Gaylord Perry was summoned to record the final two outs of the frame. The craziness worked; 10 innings later, the Giants beat the Phillies 4-3.

Dark’s Giants completed the 1964 season with a fine 90-72 record and a fourth-place finish. However, his role at the center of a controversial article numbered his days in San Francisco. Midway through the season, Stan Isaacs of Long Island Newsday asked Dark about the Giants’ performance. The manager responded by accusing his players of making recent “dumb” plays.16 Although he later insisted that his comments were specific to baserunning mistakes by Orlando Cepeda and Jesús Alou, it was already too late; because his team was made up primarily of African-American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican players, Dark was unfairly painted as a racist.

On August 4, 1964, Dark called a press conference at Shea Stadium in New York to explain that the newspapers had misinterpreted him, but it mattered not; Horace Stoneham fired him at the end of the season. Several high-ranking baseball officials declared their support for Dark, including Commissioner Ford Frick. Perhaps most significantly, former Dodgers great Jackie Robinson quickly rushed to Dark’s defense. The two had been friends since their playing days, and Robinson told the New York Times that he had “known Dark for many years, and my relationships with him have always been exceptional. I have found him to be a gentleman, and above all, unbiased. Our relationship has not only been on the baseball field but off it. We played golf together.”17

Surely boosted by this vote of confidence, Dark moved beyond the Giants and was subsequently hired as the third-base coach for the Chicago Cubs. Then, at the end of the 1965 season, Charlie Finley hired him to manage the Kansas City Athletics. Dark was already the sixth manager hired by the maverick Finley in the six years he had owned the team. The A’s boasted an unknown young club with Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom, and Lew Krausse in the starting rotation. After losing 103 games in 1965, the A’s went 74-86 in 1966 during Dark’s first season as skipper.

Despite considerable talent, lackluster baseball and personality issues caused the A’s to fall back into the cellar in 1967. After an incident that alleged player rowdiness on an airline flight, Dark had the distinction of being fired, rehired, and fired again on August 20. Not even Hall of Famer Luke Appling could resurrect the A’s as Dark’s replacement. With two All-Star shortstops at the helm, the A’s finished with a record of 62-99.

After the 1967 season, the Cleveland Indians hired Dark as manager and general manager. He led the team to its best record in nine years in 1968, with 86 wins and 75 losses. But in 1969 the Indians finished last, at 62-99. Without a substantial budget, they improved a bit in 1970 but returned to last place in 1971. With the team’s record 42-61 on July 30, 1971, Dark was fired as manager and general manager, completing his four years at the Cleveland helm with a lackluster .453 winning percentage (in San Francisco, he had won at a .569 clip).

For the next two years, Dark lived in Miami, where he excelled as a regular golfer by winning local tournaments. He supplemented his savings as an after-dinner speaker at churches, lecturing on baseball and the Bible. By 1974, however, Dark missed managing. As spring training dawned on February 20, he accepted old pal Charlie Finley’s offer to return to the A’s, by now in Oakland, as their skipper.

Dark faced enormous pressure assuming the reins of baseball’s most combative and successful team. Under Dick Williams the A’s had won the World Series in 1972 and 1973. Although one year remained on Williams’s contract, differences with Finley led him to resign. Dark accepted a one-year, $50,000 contract as Williams’s successor, with incentive bonuses if he won the pennant or World Series. An Oakland reporter heralded Dark’s arrival by writing, “The only thing worse than being hired by Charlie Finley [is] being hired by him a second time.”18

Dark claimed that his renewed religious faith had made him a changed man. No longer would he berate his players or belittle them publicly. He vowed to accept Finley’s suggestions, avoiding a renewal of their feud. Certain players, like Reggie Jackson, accepted Dark’s new personality, while others, such as Vida Blue, were rather critical. A fellow Louisianan, Blue “knew Alvin Dark was a religious man, but he’s worshipping the wrong god – Charles O. Finley.”19

The Oakland team Dark managed in 1974 had few weak spots. Catfish Hunter posted a record of 25-12, led the league with a 2.49 ERA, and won the Cy Young Award. Powered by a lineup featuring the likes of Jackson, Sal Bando, and Joe Rudi, the club captured its fourth consecutive division title by five games over the Texas Rangers. The A’s pitchers proved dominant over the Baltimore Orioles in the League Championship Series, at one point tossing 30 consecutive scoreless innings. Oakland won the series, three games to one.

The 1974 World Series was the first to feature only California teams: the A’s and manager Walter Alston’s Dodgers. After defeating Los Angeles in five games for his first Series title as a skipper, Dark agreed to return to Oakland in 1975. And despite losing Hunter as a free agent, he guided the A’s to yet another divisional title. With a record of 98-64, the A’s paced the division with a comfortable seven-game lead over the Kansas City Royals, but the 1975 Red Sox swept Oakland in three games in the playoffs.

On October 17, 1975, Charlie Finley announced that Dark’s contract would not be renewed. Dark returned to the Cubs as a coach for manager Herman Franks in 1977 before replacing John McNamara as the San Diego Padres’ manager on May 28. Although the Padres played well under Dark, their second-half record could not lift them beyond a final mark of 69-93. Citing a “communication problem,” Padres general manager Bob Fontaine fired Dark on March 21, 1978.20 He was only the second manager in major-league history to be released during spring training.

Dark was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, the Louisiana State University Sports Hall of Fame, and the New York Giants Baseball Hall of Fame. Dark married his childhood sweetheart, Adrienne Managan, in 1946, and the couple had four children, Allison, Gene, Eve, and Margaret. They divorced in 1969, and Dark was remarried a year later, to Jackie Rockwood, and adopted her children, Lori and Rusty. He returned to baseball as the farm-system evaluator for the Cubs in 1981, and in 1986 was hired as director of minor leagues and player development for the Chicago White Sox.

Dark was 92 years old in 2014, with 20 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He moved from San Diego to Easley, South Carolina, in 1983. He became involved with the Alvin Dark Foundation, which financially supports ministries,

As of January 2014, Dark was the oldest living manager of a World Series-winning, pennant-winning or postseason team.

On November 13, 2014, Dark died at home in Easley, South Carolina.

This biography has appeared in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III; “Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O’s Three Time Champions: The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74” (SABR, 2015), edited by Chip Greene; and “Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948” (Rounder Books, 2008), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Dark, Alvin, and John Underwood, When in Doubt, Fire the Manager. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1980).

Markusen, Bruce, A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s. (Haworth, New Jersey: Saint Johann Press, 2002).

Meany, Tom, The Incredible Giants. (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1955).

Stein, Fred, and Nick Peters, Giants Diary: A Century of Giants Baseball in New York and San Francisco (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1987).

Boyle, Robert, “Time of Trial for Dark,” Sports Illustrated, July 6, 1964, 26-31.

Bush, David, “Turn Back the Clock 1962: When the Giants Lost a Heartbreaker to the Yankees,” Baseball Digest. October 2002.

Dark, Alvin, and John Underwood, “Rhubarbs, Hassles, Other Hazards,” Sports Illustrated, May 13, 1974, 42-48.

McDonald, Jack, “Alvin Assigns New Lockers in Effort to Kill Cliques,” The Sporting News, April 19, 1961, 26.

Stevens, Bob, “Dark Blows Stack – Loses Finger-Tip on Metal Stool,” The Sporting News, July 5, 1961, 9.

Tourangeau, Dixie, “Spahn, Sain, and the ’48 Braves,” The National Pastime (SABR), 1998, 17-20.

“Dark’s First Hit of the Season No. 2,000 for His Career,” The Sporting News, April 27, 1960, 8.

Newell, Sean, “Did Neil Armstrong Help Perry Get His First Home Run?,” Deadspin.com, August 12, 2010 (deadspin.com/5937875/did-neil-armstrong-help-gaylord-perry-get-his-first-career-home-run.)

Louisiana’s Ragin’ Cajuns Athletic Network, athleticnetwork.net

Notes

From his birth in 1905, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, to his death in 1991, in Palm Springs, California, Leo Durocher witnessed a great deal of social, political, and international change, some of which he helped bring about. Durocher played an important supporting role in the integration of major-league baseball. His frank assessment of African American baseball talent remains a simple, if coarse, endorsement of the American belief in meritocracy. He stood in the third-base coach’s box for one of baseball’s most memorable home runs, Bobby Thomson’s 1951 “Shot Heard ’Round the World” off Ralph Branca. He led the New York Giants to a surprising World Series victory in 1954. 

More than a decade later Durocher piloted the Chicago Cubs through 6½ frustrating seasons, always falling short of the postseason. Along the way Durocher kept company with movie stars, entertainers, and an entire retinue of shady underworld characters. He had legal difficulties, four divorces, and fights with fans, jilted women, and angered husbands, fathers, and boyfriends. Through it all he maintained the utmost confidence in his own ability to come out ahead. Then as now, many have seen Durocher’s competitiveness as an excuse for playing dirty. 

Durocher found success in both playing and managing, winning World Series titles while playing shortstop for the 1928 Yankees and 1934 Cardinals, and then as the manager of the 1954 Giants. He won National League pennants, but no world championships, with the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers and the 1951 Giants. Finally, the famous phrase “nice guys finish last,” attributed to him, has achieved recognition throughout American culture.

Leo Ernest Durocher was born on July 27, 1905, to George and Clarinda (Provost) Durocher in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of four sons, but at 5-feet-10 grew to be the tallest. His French-Canadian parents often spoke French at home. George Durocher worked on the railroad, for the Boston & Albany Railroad. Like his older brothers, Leo served Mass at the local Quebecois parish, St. Louis. Durocher said he “went through grammar school and then began at Springfield Technical High School, but he got into a fight with a male mathematics teacher in his second year, was suspended for 30 days and never went back.”1

Durocher also became quite adept at playing pool, and soon frequented the local pool halls to hustle money. His athletic abilities also became evident. While playing several sports, Leo became a local baseball prodigy, playing for the Merrick Athletic Association, in the Catholic Junior League, and in a local industrial league. Company teams offered him increasingly lucrative and easy jobs if he would play for them and not for competing companies. 

In 1925, bird-dog scouts Jack O’Hara and Arthur Shean recommended the 19-year-old Durocher to play for the Hartford Senators, where he struggled at the plate but played sparkling defense.2

Leo had previously caught the eye of Yankees chief scout Paul Krichell while playing semipro ball, but Krichell failed to sign the raw talent on the spot, and instead shelled out $7,500 to purchase Durocher’s contract at season’s end in time for a two-game trial that October.3

Durocher broke into professional baseball with Hartford of the Eastern League in 1925 and earned a call-up to the Yankees that season. He got into two games and had one at-bat. Durocher spent the next two seasons in the minor leagues, at Atlanta of the Southern Association (1926) and St. Paul of the American Association (1927). He came back to the Yankees in 1928 and never completely left the major leagues until his retirement in 1973.

Durocher’s time with the Yankees was volcanic. Protected by manager Miller Huggins, he quickly made enemies with his incessant yapping, extravagant living, and antagonizing of Yankees stars like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Ruth nicknamed Durocher the “All-American Out” for his diminutive batting average. Ruth also accused Durocher of stealing his watch, a charge Durocher denied vehemently. 

Durocher lost his protective mantle when Huggins died in 1929, and he was waived to the Cincinnati Reds before the 1930 season. In Cincinnati he found his gambling appetite even more easily indulged than in New York. He married Ruby Hartley in 1930 and fathered a child. The marriage quickly fell apart, and the couple divorced in 1934. Durocher omitted this first marriage — and his only biological child — in his 1975 autobiography. Midway through the 1933 season, mired in debt and a dissolving marriage, Durocher was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. He became captain of the famous Gas House Gang, the 1934 Cardinals team that fought with one another as much as with the opposition and won the World Series against Detroit in seven games. 

On September 27 Durocher took time to remarry, this time to Grace Dozier, a prominent St. Louis businesswoman and fashion designer who paid off Leo’s substantial debts. After the 1937 season, friction between Leo and the Cardinals’ player-manager, Frankie Frisch, led to a trade to the Brooklyn Dodgers. There Durocher reunited with Larry MacPhail, who had traded him from Cincinnati to Branch Rickey’s Cardinals. After the 1938 season Durocher became the Dodgers’ player-manager.

Leo received his nicknames “The Lip” or “Lippy” during his first full year in the majors, 1928. The roots for these names, and the behavior that spawned them, reached back to his boyhood days in West Springfield. Durocher dutifully idolized Walter “Rabbit” Maranville, the Boston Braves’ diminutive shortstop who hailed from nearby Springfield. Maranville, only 5-feet-5 and weighing 155 pounds, recognized that smaller players needed a mental edge to compensate for their lack of size. 

Maranville came to know of the neighborhood’s emerging star. He once told the young Leo, “Never back up,” because “the first backward step a little man takes is the one that’s going to kill him.”4 Maranville obviously meant this advice to apply to fielding the ball, but one might wonder if Leo took Maranville a bit too literally. George Durocher and his other sons exhibited the rock-ribbed but nonetheless quiet stoicism that French-Canadian immigrants were known for in the Northeast. Maranville’s words could also be understood as “don’t back down from a fight,” advice Leo often took to heart.  

The tutorials in baseball’s mental game continued as Leo progressed through the minor leagues. Miller Huggins completed Leo’s apprenticeship when he reached New York. During the 1928 season with the Yankees Durocher became a full-blown loudmouth bench jockey. The verbal assaults continued through his managing years. Boyhood friends who visited Durocher for games would note that almost every one of Leo’s sentences included several obscenities. Branch Rickey once remarked of Durocher, when pushed into a corner, “He’s still that kid from West Springfield with a pool cue butt in his hand.”5      

From the earliest days of his playing career to the end of his managing days, Durocher loved to yap. Miller Huggins had encouraged the 160-pound youngster to compensate for his weak bat with hustle. Huggins, Leo said, “kept telling me I’d stick around for a long time if I kept my cockiness and my scrappiness and that fierce desire to do anything to win.”6 Durocher willingly obliged his mentor. First as a player then as a manager, he never shied away from verbal combat. As of 2014, Durocher ranked third all-time for the most times ejected from a major-league game as a player or a manager. Strictly as a manager, Durocher ranks fourth.

As a player Durocher also distinguished himself with quick fielding. Throughout his managerial career he often reverted to his boyhood games, playing pepper with players several decades younger than himself. Even when he managed the Cubs in his 60s, Durocher surprised two of his stars, Ernie Banks and Ron Santo, with his ability to keep up with the younger players.

Durocher was certainly not a threat with the bat. He was a career .247 hitter, with just 24 home runs. His highest batting average came in 1936, when he hit .286 for the Cardinals. Overall, though, he performed better the preceding year, hitting .265 in 143 games. That season (1935) included career highs in home runs (8), slugging percentage (.376), and RBIs (78). 

Durocher’s already limited productivity tailed off significantly in the 1940s. In 1940 he played in little more than half the games (62) he had the year before, and came to bat only 175 times. In 1939 Durocher came in eighth in the MVP voting, and he was second among shortstops. In 1941, 1943, and 1945, his last three years playing, he appeared in only 26 games total, batting just 67 times. (He managed, but did not play for, the Dodgers in 1942 and 1944.) In 1941 Brooklyn won its first pennant since 1920, but lost the World Series to the Yankees in five games. The next year, the Dodgers won 104 games but lost the pennant to the Cardinals. Brooklyn finished third in 1943, the same year Durocher and Grace Dozier were divorced. 

With the players who had been in the military returning in 1946, Leo shifted over to managing full time. It was in that season that he purportedly made his well-known statement “nice guys finish last.” Aimed at the last-place Giants and their manager, Mel Ott, the phrase quickly took on a life of its own, appearing in all sorts of publications, popular and scholarly, ever since.

The groundbreaking 1947 season was noticeable for Durocher’s absence. He had been present during spring training in Havana, Cuba, playing along with Branch Rickey’s orchestration of Jackie Robinson’s promotion to Brooklyn. Throughout the winter Rickey had planted stories that Durocher was “pressuring” him to add Robinson to the Dodgers’ roster. However, just when Rickey was ready to announce that Robinson would in fact start on Opening Day, Durocher’s past threw Rickey and the Dodgers an exploding curveball. 

On the very day Robinson was to be introduced, Commissioner Albert B. “Happy” Chandler suspended Durocher from baseball for a year. Chandler claimed that Durocher had once again associated with known gamblers. Prior to a 1947 spring training game in Havana, Durocher noticed two such men sitting with Yankees owner Larry MacPhail. Rickey and Durocher complained to Chandler about double standards. MacPhail responded by decrying the charges as slanderous. Chandler fined both owners and suspended Durocher, a move that astonished Rickey, Durocher, and Brooklyn’s fans. 

This latest fiasco concerning Durocher only added to Rickey’s headaches. In January Leo had been in the papers again — this time for his marriage to the actress Laraine Day, whom he had met in 1945. The Utah-born Day was already married to Ray Hendricks, but in January 1947 Day divorced Hendricks in Mexico, then married Durocher the next day in El Paso, Texas. Back in California, Durocher and Day, who still had a year to wait before her California divorce from Hendricks was final, had to plead before a judge so she could avoid conviction for bigamy. 

Compounding the scandal’s impact was a boycott of the Dodgers by the local chapter of the Catholic Youth Organization. The director of the Brooklyn CYO, Rev. Vincent Powell, removed CYO support for the Knothole Gang and published a letter in the newspapers on March 1, 1947, charging that Durocher was “undermining the moral training of Brooklyn’s Roman Catholic youth.”7 The CYO contributed both youths and money to the Brooklyn Knothole Gang, the team’s adolescent fan base. Supported by US Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy, the Brooklyn Diocese had presented Rickey with the ultimatum: fire Durocher for his moral turpitude or face a boycott. 

Durocher’s suspension solved the boycott issue; nevertheless, with the beginning of the 1947 season a week away, Rickey had no manager for his new team. Eventually he named Burt Shotton as interim manager. Shotton promptly led the team to the National League pennant.

Before he left, Leo did manage to contribute significantly to the Dodgers’ 1947 season. In Havana the Dodgers learned of Rickey’s plan to integrate the team with Robinson. Some players circulated a petition protesting Rickey’s move. As soon as he heard of it, Durocher called a team meeting — at midnight. Surrounded by sleepy and cross players, Durocher flatly told them to “wipe your ass” with the petition.  Finally, Leo concluded, many black players shared his own fierce desire to win. They were hungry, and unless the Dodgers and the other white players themselves played harder, they would find themselves replaced. Leo cared about winning, and if that meant starting black players, he had no problem doing so. He went public with his support for Robinson: “I don’t care if he is yellow or black or has stripes like a fucking zebra. I’m his manager and I say he plays.”8  

Underneath his coarse language, Leo believed in meritocracy. Those who are most able are the ones who start, regardless of appearance or background. This managerial approach led him to start three African Americans in the 1951 World Series (Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, and Hank Thompson). When he arrived at the Giants’ spring training camp, Hank Thompson recalled Durocher’s introduction: “I’m only going to say one thing about color: You can be green or be pink on this team. If you can play baseball and help this team you’re welcome to play.” Thompson concluded: “And it was true.”9

Throughout the 1947 season, Rickey assured Durocher that he would get his manager’s job back. Shotton’s performance — winning the pennant and pushing the Yankees to seven games in the World Series — made Rickey reconsider his promise, but in the end he kept it. When Leo arrived at spring training in 1948, he did seem changed. Reporters, players, and even Rickey himself noticed that the marriage (and perhaps the suspension) had mellowed him. The old Leo resurfaced briefly when Jackie Robinson reported to camp. Over the winter Robinson had gained significant weight. Durocher reverted to his older hectoring self, badgering Robinson incessantly. Robinson lost the weight and regained his playing form.

Rickey, though, remained unsatisfied. Wishing perhaps for a managerial change himself, Rickey often mused aloud that the team needed shaking up. The season’s start bore out Rickey’s worries as the Dodgers stumbled to a 35-37 record. When Horace Stoneham, owner of the crosstown archrival Giants inquired about Burt Shotton’s availability as a replacement for Mel Ott, Rickey had his chance. With Durocher away in Montreal on a scouting trip, Rickey and Stoneham met. While Rickey did not offer Durocher’s services, he also did not refuse when Stoneham asked for Durocher instead of Shotton. 

Thus, the Dodgers’ irascible manager switched in midseason to manage their hated rivals. Fans of both teams were stunned, as was Leo, who did not learn of the managerial trade until he returned. The night the deal was completed, Stoneham visited Laraine Day at the couple’s Manhattan apartment. When she learned the news, she switched off the radio broadcast of that night’s Dodgers game, saying, “Then why am I listening to this?”10

Many of Ott’s players were slow-footed veterans, and Durocher’s aggressive, gambling style did not sit well. He did manage the team to a .519 record (41-38) for the rest of the season. That was only good enough for fifth place in the National League. The next season, 1949, was Durocher’s worst with the Giants; the team finished fifth again, but this time with a 74-83 record. From 1950 through 1955, though, the Giants and Durocher enjoyed five winning seasons, never finishing lower than third. During that span the Giants won two National League pennants and the 1954 World Series. In 1951 they made up a 13-game deficit in August against the Dodgers and forced a three-game playoff for the pennant. 

The Giants won the third game, 5-4, on Bobby Thomson’s famed home run. According to author Joshua Prager, Leo did more than just watch; his rudimentary telescope-and-bell system rigged in the Polo Grounds offices 483 feet away from home plate had tipped Durocher, Thomson, and the Giants that Branca was about to throw a fastball. The Giants then lost a hard-fought World Series to the Yankees in six games. In 1954 the Giants swept the heavily favored Cleveland Indians in four games. The next year they finished third, a distant 18½ games behind the Dodgers. After that 1955 season, Stoneham replaced Durocher with Bill Rigney. 

Durocher’s stint with the Giants ranked second only to his time with the Dodgers. He managed the Giants for almost 7½ seasons and finished with a .549 winning percentage (637-523). He managed the Dodgers for 8½ seasons and finished only slightly better (738-565).  After the Giants replaced him, Durocher pursued his long-desired goal of shifting careers to show business. However, despite his several celebrity friends, most endeavors quickly fell through. His attempt to host a variety show on NBC flopped. Durocher appeared on several television shows, but he made more money doing baseball broadcasts on radio and television. Day divorced him in 1960. Durocher coached for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1961 to 1964. True to form, he often criticized manager Walter Alston for indecisiveness and tentative leadership.

In 1966 the Chicago Cubs named the 60-year-old Durocher manager. That season Leo suffered through his worst year as a manager, going 59-103. But much like his stint with the Giants, Durocher then led his team through several winning seasons. From 1967 to 1971, the Cubs enjoyed five straight winning seasons. 

The club stood at 46-44 when owner Phil Wrigley fired Durocher midway through the 1972 season. Durocher’s time with the Cubs is remembered mostly for what did not happen. For several years the talent-laden club finished below expectations. The 1969 season was the best example. The Cubs led the National League East division for over 100 days, and were 9½ games ahead of the Mets in August. However, the team faltered badly. 

As the season wore on, Durocher misused his pitchers, and his tendency to berate players often backfired. Once again his hard-driving style had begun to wear thin. During two weeks in September, the Cubs fell from five games ahead of the Mets to 4½ games behind them, and eventually finished eight games back. The Cubs finished second again in 1970, albeit without the spectacular meltdown. In 1971 they wound up third. That year the locker room finally boiled over with fights between Durocher and the players. Unlike previous stints with the Dodgers and Giants, Leo never related well with the Cubs’ African American players. 

One of his most common managerial tactics was to belittle and enrage players so that they played better. He had picked up this technique from Miller Huggins, and it worked quite well with stars like Jackie Robinson and Sal Maglie. With the Cubs, it backfired. Pitcher Ken Holtzman took offense at Durocher’s repeated use of anti-Semitic remarks. In the years after Curt Flood’s legal challenge to the reserve clause, Durocher’s well-known hostility to union organizing appeared shockingly retrograde. Halfway through the 1972 season, owner Phil Wrigley had enough and replaced Durocher with Whitey Lockman. Leo did not remain idle for long. The Houston Astros made him skipper for the last 31 games of 1972. As before, he wrangled with the team’s established stars, in this case pitcher Larry Dierker. Durocher managed the entire 1973 season, going 82-80, before retiring for good. 

Leo moved back to California and waited for the Hall of Fame recognition he felt he was due. He and his fourth wife, Lynne Walker Goldbatt, divorced in 1981, but the couple had already separated years earlier. Durocher had married the Chicago socialite in 1969.

As the years went by, Leo rediscovered his Catholic faith. He served faithfully as an usher at the Saturday evening Mass at his local parish. He also became increasingly bitter over his perceived slight by the Hall of Fame. He died on October 7, 1991, and was buried in Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. The Hall of Fame recognition finally came in 1994. On Induction Day, Laraine Day accepted the award. 

Durocher’s posthumous election to the Baseball Hall of Fame rested exclusively on his managerial career. In 24 seasons, he amassed 2,008 victories and 1,709 losses, a .540 winning percentage. However, Durocher’s effectiveness as a manager exceeded the raw numbers. Throughout his managerial career, he took a tough, scrappy, take-no-prisoners approach to the game. Only at the end of his managerial career did Durocher encounter significant player resistance to his style. When he retired, he seemed a relic from an earlier baseball age.

Sources

Claerbaut, David, Durocher’s Cubs: The Greatest Team That Didn’t Win (Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing, 2000).

Day, Laraine, Day with the Giants, Kyle Crichton, ed. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1952).

Durocher, Leo, The Dodgers and Me: The Inside Story (Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1948).

_________, with Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975).

Eskenazi, Gerald, The Lip: A Biography of Leo Durocher (New York: Quill, William Morrow & Co., 1993).

Feldmann, Doug, Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Cubs. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

Prager, Joshua, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca, and the Shot Heard Round the World (New York: Pantheon, 2006).

Tygiel, Jules, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Hazucha, Andrew, “Leo Durocher’s Last Stand: Anti-Semitism, Racism, and the Cubs Player Rebellion of 1971,” in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 15 (#1, Fall 2006), 1-12.

Heidenry, John, The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-From-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series and America’s Heart During the Great Depression (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).

Mandell, David, “The Suspension of Leo Durocher,” The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History #27 (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2007), 101-04.

Mann, Arthur, Baseball Confidential: Secret History of the War Among Chandler, Durocher, MacPhail, and Rickey (New York: David McKay Company, 1951).

Marlett, Jeffrey, “Durocher as Machiavelli: Good American, Bad Catholic,” in William M. Simons, ed., in The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2007-2008 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009), 38-50.

_______, “Don’t Give Me No Lip: Durocher’s Management Style and the Integration of Baseball,” in NINE: A Journal of Baseball and American Culture 20:2 (Spring 2012), 43-54.  muse.jhu.edu/journals/nine/v020/20.2.marlett.html.

Shaplen, Robert, “The Nine Lives of Leo Durocher,” Sports Illustrated, June 6, 1955.

Treder, Steve, “A Legacy of What-Ifs: Horace Stoneham and the Integration of the Giants” in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 10 (#2, 2002), 71-101.

Williams, Peter, “You Can Blame the Media: The Role of the Press in Creating Baseball Villains,” in Alvin L. Hall, ed., in Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 1989 (Westport, Connecticut: Meckler Publishing and State University of New York College at Oneonta, 1991), 343-60.

Woodward, Stanley. “That Guy Durocher!” Saturday Evening Post, June 3, 1950, 25-27.

Thanks to Rod Nelson for information on the scouting of Leo Durocher.

Notes

1 Robert Shaplen, “Beginning: The Nine Lives of Leo Durocher,” Sports Illustrated, May 23, 1955.

2 Gene Schoor, The Leo Durocher Story (New York: Julian Meissner, 1955) , 30-33, 40.

3 The Sporting News, June 12, 1957, 28.

4 Leo Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last, 34.

5 Rickey quoted by Red Smith in William Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999), 103.

6 Gerald Eskenazai, The Lip, 248.

7 “Durocher Versus the CYO,” Catholic Digest 11 (June 1947), 96; reprint from The Catholic Mirror (April, 1947).

8 Gerald Eshkenazi, The Lip (New York: Quill, 1993), 248.

9 Leo Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last, 46. Gerald Eskenazai, The Lip, 248.

10 Arthur Mann, Baseball Confidential: The Secret History of the War Among Chandler, Durocher, MacPhail, and Rickey (New York: David McKay Co., 1951), 182.

With his short arms and legs, long torso, and ample midsection, right-hander Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons may not have looked like a major-league pitcher during his 19-year career with the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers from 1925 to1943. But with one of baseball’s most effective knuckleballs and a deceptive, whirling delivery, he won 217 games. One of the era’s most popular players and arguably the best fielding pitcher (despite his size), Fitzsimmons helped lead the Giants to the World Series in 1933 and 1936 and the Dodgers in 1941. A baseball lifer, Fitzsimmons managed the Philadelphia Phillies (1943-1945) and served as a respected coach for multiple teams, most notably on the Giants’ pennant-winning teams in 1951 and 1954.

Frederick Landis Fitzsimmons was born on July 26, 1901, in Mishawaka, Indiana (about five miles east of South Bend). His parents, Robert Oscar and Margaret Ellen (Gordon) Fitzsimmons, native Hoosiers, named their first son (their second of five children) in honor of Henry Landis, a newspaper editor in Indiana (and no relation to future baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis). Young Freddie received his first instruction in baseball from his father, a former sandlot player who rose to the rank of chief of police in the town. But despite growing up in the heart of football country and in the shadow of the University of Notre Dame, Freddie idolized legendary shortstop Honus Wagner and dreamed of becoming a big-league infielder while attending Battell grammar school and spending his summers playing ball on an uncle’s farm in the southern part of the state. When he was about 15 years old, he learned to throw the knuckleball from another youngster, fell in love with the dastardly pitch, and decided to become a pitcher. After local semipro pitcher High Pockets Daniels helped him learn to control the knuckler, Fitzsimmons soon made a name for himself in sandlot leagues and graduated to more competitive semipro leagues. “I didn’t play any ball in high school,” he recalled of his two years at Mishawaka High School, “because those factory teams were after me and I had to train and work out for them.”1

Fitzsimmons’ big break came in 1920 when he pitched against Carl “Skinny” Blackmore in a semipro game in Mishawaka.  Blackmore, who also played for the Muskegon (Michigan) Muskies of the Class B Central League told his manager, Doc White, about the knuckleballer, whom the team then invited for a tryout. Without informing his father, who wanted his son to maintain his steady job in a local woolen mill, Fitzsimmons paid his own expenses and traveled to Muskegon, about 140 miles away, and made the team.  He beat the eventual league champion Grand Rapids Joshers in his first game, and went on to pitch 12 consecutive complete games, winning three of them and posting a 3.69 ERA. Armed with his crafty knuckleball and an assortment of breaking balls, the 5-foot-11, 175-pound righty (he had not yet acquired the “Fat Freddie” sobriquet) proved to be a durable hurler, logging almost 500 innings and winning 30 games in less than two years for a mediocre Muskegon club before the Indianapolis Indians of the American Association bought his contract near the end of the 1922 season for a reported $3,900.

Fitzsimmons spent almost three years playing with the Indians and getting accustomed to facing mature hitters, many of whom had or would have major-league experience.  After winning three of seven decisions following his arrival in Indianapolis, Fitzsimmons carved out a 9-4 record in 1923 as a spot starter, and then came into his own the next two seasons under manager Donie Bush. He won 14 games and logged 279 innings (fifth-best in the league) in 1924, followed by an outstanding 14-6 record in less than a full season in 1925. The highlight of his final season in the minor leagues may have been an outing against the Milwaukee Brewers, in which he yielded a double on the first pitch of the game and then retired the next 27 batters to notch his only career one-hitter.

Fitzsimmons’ transformation into one of the best young pitchers in the American Association came at a prescient moment. The New York Giants, winners of the previous four NL pennants, got off to another hot start under manager John McGraw in 1925, but their pitching wilted in June and July. On team scout Dick Kinsella’s recommendation, McGraw went to Indianapolis to personally scout Fitzsimmons, who had bewildered the Giants in an exhibition game in Plant City, Florida, during spring training. On August 8 the Giants acquired Fitzsimmons for a reported $50,000.

Fitzsimmons saw his first major-league game the day he reported to the Giants. Thrown into a pressure-packed pennant race, he made his major-league debut on August 12, relieving Virgil Barnes and hurling four scoreless frames in a 5-3 loss to the eventual World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. Four days later Fitz (as his teammates and reporters typically called him throughout his big-league career) made his first start, a complete-game victory over the Boston Braves at the Polo Grounds. One of the most consistent Giants pitchers over the last six weeks of the season, Fitzsimmons won six of nine decisions, completed six of eight starts, including the first of 30 career shutouts (a four-hitter against the Pirates), and posted a team-best 2.65 ERA.

Fitzsimmons won 14 and logged 219 innings for the fifth-place Giants in his first full season in the big leagues to commence an impressive streak of nine consecutive seasons of at least 200 innings. Overshadowed by other pitchers from his era (such as Charlie Root and Pat Malone of the Cubs, Dazzy Vance of the Dodgers, and later Dizzy Dean of the Cardinals and Giants teammate Carl Hubbell), Fitzsimmons was one of the most durable and successful pitchers of his era, averaging 242 innings and 16 wins per season from 1926 to 1934.

Fitzsimmons’ success rested with his knuckleball. “My knuckleball kind of acted like a spitter so people called it a ‘dry-spitter,’ ” he said. “It broke down the same way as a spitter. Catchers didn’t have any trouble catching me even though they didn’t have big gloves.”2 In his first game as a professional pitcher with the Muskies, the opposing manager protested continually that Fitzsimmons threw a spitter, a charge he would face for years to come. Unlike other traditional knuckleballers of the times (Eddie Rommel or Jesse Haines), Fitzsimmons gripped the ball with two fingers (his index and middle fingers); when he threw the pitch, he pushed his fingers forward, resulting in a fast knuckler with uncanny movement. The Sporting News considered it a “freak pitch even in knuckleball circles.”3 Bill James and Rob Neyer refer to Fitzsimmons’ knuckleball as a “knuckle-curve” much like what Burt Hooten of the Chicago Cubs threw in the early 1970s.4 The burly right-hander also had an above-average fastball and a curveball.

Because of his unusual control of the knuckleball, Fitzgerald could use the pitch no matter what the pitch count to surprise the hitter. He walked just 846 batters in 3,223⅔ innings for an average of 2.4 bases on balls per nine innings. (For perspective, Lefty Grove walked 2.7 per nine innings.)  “It all depends,” he said when asked how often he threw his knuckeball. “Some days I throw a hundred balls up there [and] maybe fifty of ’em would be a knuckler.”5 As with any pitch, the element of surprise was key. “When you were expecting a low breaking knuckleball that high fast one would come in,” said catcher Gabby Hartnett, “and you wouldn’t be ready to hit it. [Fitzsimmons] was a whiz at giving you the pitch you weren’t looking for.”6

Described as a “whirling dervish,” Fitzsimmons’ unorthodox delivery disconcerted hitters who were unable to pick up the ball.7 Manager Donie Bush of the Indianapolis Indians suggested that Fitzsimmons throw with a whirl-around motion to hide the ball. The result was that Fitzsimmons started his delivery facing center field then twisted around, much like Luis Tiant five decades later, and released the ball from multiple angles (from overhand, three-quarters, and side-arm to underhand) to confound hitters.  “I never kept my eyes on home plate,” said Fitzsimmons, who years later as a pitching coach had difficulties teaching his hurlers to do the exact opposite.8 “Take [my delivery] away from me and I wouldn’t gamble on my success,” he said. “That’s how important I rate it.”9 According to the pitcher, he threw the knuckler equally to right- and left-handed hitters, but noted that his side-arm knuckler broke like a curve while from an overhand or three-quarter delivery it broke straight down. In his autobiography Nice Guys Finish Last, Leo Durocher offered perhaps the most visually descriptive account of Fitzsimmons on the mound: “If you ever saw Freddie pitch, you could never forget him. He would turn his back completely to the batter, as he was winding up, wheel back around and let out the most god-awful grunt as he was letting the ball go — rrrrrhhhhhooooo — like a rhinoceros in heat.”10

As a green rookie, Fitzsimmons was shocked by manager John McGraw’s public berating of players in the clubhouse, yet the pitcher overcame these outbursts to become a fierce and fearless competitor on the field, willing to throw inside (and occasionally at a batter) in order to establish his control of the plate. The Giants retooled from their glory days (1921-1924) by adding first baseman Bill Terry, shortstop Travis Jackson, and third baseman Freddy Lindstrom, as well as second baseman Rogers Hornsby, and were the NL’s highest scoring team in 1927. They struggled, however, for much of the season under McGraw, who took a leave of absence with 32 games remaining just as the club began to play better. On Fitzsimmons’ broad shoulders the Giants (now managed by Hornsby) crept back into the pennant hunt the last month of the season. Fitzsimmons made seven starts, relieved three times, and won five of his 17 games in that fateful month. His victory in relief of Virgil Barnes against the eventual pennant-winning Pirates on September 24 brought the team to within 1½ games of the lead, but the Giants ultimately finished in third place, an agonizing two games behind the Pirates.

Fitzsimmons won 20 games for the first and only time of his career in 1928 with McGraw once again in the dugout.  In a repeat performance from the previous campaign, the Giants played sluggishly for most of the season, but caught fire in the last month, winning 25 of 33 games to battle the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL crown. Starting eight times in September (many of his starts on short rest), Fitzsimmons won three games in a span of five days, culminating with a ten-inning complete-game victory on September 18 over the Pirates. But the Giants lost three of their final five games to finish in second place.

Fitzsimmons posted records of 15-11, 19-7 (with a league-leading .731 winning percentage), and 18-11 as the Giants finished in third place twice and second place once from 1929 to 1931. He endeared himself to fans and teammates alike for his hustle, positive attitude, and willingness to play through injuries.  Highlights of these seasons include hurling four shutouts against the Cincinnati Reds in 1929 and completing six consecutive starts, winning five of them plus another in relief) in the last month of the 1930 season to keep the heat on the eventual pennant-winning Cardinals.

Fitzsimmons gradually acquired the affectionate nickname Fat Freddie by the late 1920s as his weight increased to 215 pounds if not more. Wearing a perpetual smile, Fitzsimmons was dark-complexioned (often referred to as a Black Irishman) with jet-black hair parted down the middle, dark blue eyes, and a deep voice.11 Newspaper accounts of the times described him as the most popular Giants player of the era and as having an emotional connection with Giants fans that few players ever had. Humble, approachable, and outgoing, Fitzsimmons avoided the nightlife New York City offered and neither drank nor smoked cigarettes. He was seen constantly with his wife, Helen (née Borger), whom he met while playing in Indianapolis and married after his rookie season. Described by The Sporting News as the “most devoted couple in the majors,” the Fitzsimmonses had one child, also named Helen, who like her mother was a common fixture at spring training.12  Wife Helen was a diehard baseball fan who celebrated her husband’s accomplishments, but suffered equally his personal and team disappointments. During the offseason, the photogenic couple lived on a farm in Arcadia, California, outside of Los Angeles, where they raised chickens in prosaic surroundings. Later they moved to Yucca Valley, north of Palm Springs. “There isn’t a finer character in baseball,” wrote nationally syndicated columnist Dan Daniel, offering perhaps the greatest compliment to Fitzsimmons. “And there isn’t a more straightforward hombre pitching, catching, batting, or doing anything in this grand game of ours.”13

Fat Freddie was considered the best fielding pitcher of his generation. He possessed uncanny reflexes, agility, and quickness off the mound, and had unparalleled range.14  Despite his short legs and arms (Casey Stengel nicknamed him the Seal because his arms gave the impression of flippers), Fitzsimmons was often described as a fifth infielder, who regularly knocked down liners back to the mound with his hand, glove, legs, and even chest in order to save a hit.15 Along the way he suffered bruises and well-publicized incidents of being knocked out after being hit in the throat, head, and groin. “It’s the little things that lose a lot of ballgames,” Fitzsimmons once said about the art of fielding for pitchers. “Proper fielding of a slow ball rolling near the box sometimes means the difference between a loss and a victory.”16 Fitzsimmons admitted that his fielding helped make him into a good pitcher, but noted that it takes practice, patience, and above all desire to be a good fielder. “The most important thing is hustling in pepper games as if you are in an actual game,” he said.17 He was among the top five in putouts nine times, leading the league four times, while placing in the top four in assists seven times (he led once), and retired among the career leaders in both categories.

A watershed moment in New York Giants history occurred in 1932 when Bill Terry replaced McGraw as manager of the storied club. After years of frustrating losses and near-misses, Fitzsimmons noticed how the players had begun to bristle under the dictatorial leadership of McGraw, aptly nicknamed Little Napoleon. “McGraw’s abuse antagonizes so many men that their refusal to play for him eventually led to his resignation,” Fitzsimmons said, unsurprised by the move.18 He welcomed Terry as the new manager, yet like the rest of his team, was mired in a collective slump, and finished with an 11-11 record, his only nonwinning record in his first ten years in the big leagues.

Terry led what sportswriters considered an average team in 1933 to the NL pennant behind the exceptional pitching of Fitzsimmons (16-11), Hal Schumacher (19-11), and especially Most Valuable Player Hubbell (23-12).  Facing the Washington Senators, who had broken the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Athletics’ seven-year hold on the AL pennant, the Giants held Washington to just 11 runs to win the World Series in five games. After years of waiting for his time on the national stage, Fat Freddie pitched adequately in Game Three at Griffith Stadium, surrendering nine hits and four runs, but Earl Whitehill held the Giants scoreless, making Fitzsimmons a tough-luck loser, 4-0.

The agony of losing the pennant on the last weekend of the season in 1934 was eclipsed by Fitzsimmons’ first major arm woes in 1935. Given extra rest between starts in the first half of the season, Fitzsimmons won four of eight decisions through June. Oddly, all four victories were shutouts, which led the league. But the pain soon became unbearable and the courageous veteran missed almost all of July and August after surgery to remove adhesions and cartilage buildup. The operation marked the end of Fitzsimmons’ career as a front-line starter capable of pitching every four or five days. He won only 59 more games during the remainder of his career (1936-1943).

Fitzsimmons came down with a severe streptococcal infection in 1936. According to The Sporting News, it “almost cost him his life” and weakened him the first half of the season.19 Beginning on July 28 and culminating with a 13-inning duel with the Pirates’ Waite Hoyt on August 28, Fitzsimmons won six consecutive starts to lead the Giants from an eight-game deficit into a three-game lead over the Cubs.  He tossed three more complete-game victories in September to help the Giants capture another NL pennant and secure his spot in the starting rotation for the World Series. In the first all-New York World Series since the clubs’ meeting in 1924, the Giants (92-62) were prohibitive underdogs against the New York Yankees (102-51). With the Series tied at one game apiece, Fitzsimmons pitched brilliantly in Game Three, holding the Yankees to two hits and one run through seven innings. Then Frank Crosetti hit a chopper back to the mound with two out and men on first and third in the eighth inning. As Fat Freddie had done countless times in his career, he knocked the ball down with his gloved hand, but as fate would have it, the ball rolled away as the Yankees’ Jake Powell scored the deciding run in a 2-1 game. In Game Six, the 35-year-old looked his age as the vaunted Yankees sluggers pounded him for nine hits and five runs in 3⅔ innings to capture the title.

With just 14 victories the previous two years and the memory of his loss in Game Six still fresh, the 35-year-old Fitzsimmons got off to a poor start in 1937, leading the Giants to believe he was washed up. Rumors swirled that he would take a coaching position with the team, but the veteran was instead unexpectedly shipped to the Brooklyn Dodgers for 24-year-old relief pitcher Tom Blake on June 11. Roundly criticized in the press as an insult to a player in his twilight, the trade proved to be a coup for the Dodgers. While Blake won just one game for the Giants, Fitzsimmons, who had terrorized Brooklyn throughout his career, posting a 33-15 record against them, quickly became a fan favorite, tossing complete-game victories in his first two starts. (The Dodgers could have purchased Fitzsimmons’ contract in 1925, but team scout Spencer Abbott suggested otherwise.20)

A once-a-week pitcher for the long-suffering Dodgers, Fitzsimmons was a solid contributor. In 1938, the cagey veteran was arguably Brooklyn’s best pitcher, posting an 11-8 record for the seventh-place team. He topped 200 innings for the tenth and final time and completed eight of his final ten starts, including seven consecutive wins, to lower his ERA to 3.02 (sixth-best in the league). When Fitzsimmons slipped to 7-9 in 1939 for first-year manager Leo Durocher, the press churned out reports that he would retire to become a coach.  Durocher, however, persuaded him to return to the team, which had just enjoyed its best season in almost a decade.

In a magical, fairy-tale-like season, the 38-year-old Fitzsimmons turned back the hands of time to post a 16-2 record in 1940. In the second game of a doubleheader at Forbes Field on July 14, he blanked the Pirates on four hits to become just the 11th pitcher since 1900 to win 200 games in the NL. Even more importantly, the Dodgers proved to be serious pennant contenders, battling the Cincinnati Reds for the NL lead for most of the season before finishing in second place. Fitzsimmons was praised for fostering a winning attitude and sense of camaraderie on the team. “Fred’s spirit is one of the vital forces on the club,” wrote Dan Parker in the New York Journal-American.21  As enthusiastic as a rookie and possessing an unmatched work ethic, Fitzsimmons was a de-facto coach who generously shared his knowledge of pitching and opposing players with teammates. Accolades poured in all season. He was chosen as the ideal father in Organized Baseball on Father’s Day, and in a contest sponsored by The Sporting News, fans across the country voted him their favorite big-league veteran.22 He concluded the season by winning his last seven decisions to finish with an .889 winning percentage, a new post-1900 record (since broken by Roy Face in 1959), and an impressive 2.81 ERA. In 1875 two Boston Red Stocking pitchers, Al Spalding (54-5) Jack Manning (16-2), posted winning percentages of .889 or better, and in 1929 Tom Zachary of the New York Yankees went undefeated (12-0).

Pitching more than 3,000 innings had taken a toll on Fitzsimmons’ arm. In constant pain during his last few seasons, his elbow swelled and his arm seemed to curl up after each outing, making it impossible to hold a ball for several days. “[Fitz’s] arm was so crooked,” said Durocher, “that he literally could not reach down and pick anything up. … [His arm] threw him off balance and gave him a rolling, swinging gait.”23 In spite of the pain, Fitzsimmons was reinvigorated after his success in 1940 and returned to the Dodgers in 1941.  Described as “courageous” and pitching with “sheer determination,” Fitzsimmons started only 12 times all season but made them count in another heated pennant race.24 He blanked the Braves on August 10 for his fifth consecutive victory of the season (and 11th over two seasons).  On September 11 at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, he hurled ten inspirational innings against the Cardinals and earned his sixth and final victory of the season when Dixie Walker singled home two runs in the 11th inning.

In a situation reminiscent of 1936, Fitzsimmons faced the New York Yankees in Game Three of the 1941 World Series with the Series tied at one game apiece. Fitzsimmons pitched brilliantly, yielding just four hits and no runs through seven innings. With two outs in the seventh, pitcher Marius Russo smashed a liner back to the mound, hitting Fitzsimmons in the left kneecap. Fitzsimmons limped off the mound, his season over. The Yankees scored two runs off Hugh Casey in the eighth inning to win the game 2-1.  They then closed out the Series in five games.

The injury, coupled with age, effectively ended Fitzsimmons’ pitching career. He served as a Dodgers coach in 1942 and took the mound just once. He returned in 1943 to make nine more appearances, including seven once-a-week starts, but was released in mid-July in order to take over as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. An ultimate competitor, but rarely the topic of Hall of Fame discussions, Fitzsimmons made the most of his natural ability to win 217 games in his 19-year big-league career.

Fitzsimmons’ major-league managerial career lasted only 286 games for the talent-poor Phillies. With the team mired in last place and rumors swirling that team owner William D. Cox was betting on the team (he was eventually suspended in November), Fitzsimmons resigned in late June 1945 “nearing a breakdown.”25 He also managed in the minor leagues on three different occasions (1953, 1956, and 1961) for three different organizations.

After serving on the Boston Braves’ staff during their pennant-winning season in 1948, Fitzsimmons was mired in a controversy when he accepted Leo Durocher’s offer to join the Giants’ staff in 1949. Commissioner Happy Chandler ruled that Durocher had tampered with Fitzsimmons, who was legally under contract with the Braves. He fined Fitzsimmons $500 and suspended him for one month, but recognized the validity of his contract with his new team.

Fitzsimmons was considered a consummate and patient teacher during his seven years (1949-1955) as a Giants coach. During the pennant-winning seasons of 1951 and 1954, the staff led the National League in ERA. “We started out so late and so far back,” said Fitzsimmons of the 1951 Giants, who trailed the Dodgers by 13 games on August 11. “It was completely cockeyed and crazy to think that we even had a chance, but that team had an overwhelming sense of confidence that carried it on a cloud for six weeks.”26 Fitzsimmons also coached for the Chicago Cubs (1957-1959) and the Kansas City Athletics (1960) before returning to the Cubs for an abbreviated stint on Durocher’s staff in 1966.

Fitzsimmons retired with his wife, Helen, to Yucca Valley, where he enjoyed an active outdoor life and occasionally scouted. At the age of 78, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on November 18, 1979. He was cremated and the ashes buried at the Montecito Memorial Park in Colton, California.27

Sources

Carmichael, John P., ed. “Fred Fritzsimmons as told to John P. Carmichael,” My Greatest Day in Baseball (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1945; reprint University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 108-114.

Durocher, Leo, and Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

James, Bill, and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches (New York: Fireside, 2004).

Kahn, Roger, Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing About It a Game (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).

Stout, Glenn, and Richard A. Johnson, The Dodgers: 120 Years of Baseball (New York: Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, 2004).

Thomson, Bobby, The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant! (New York: Citadel, 2001).

Williams, Peter, When the Giants were Giants: Bill Terry and the Golden Age of New York Baseball (New York: Algonquin Books, 1994).

Chicago Tribune

New York Times

The Sporting News

Ancestry.com

BaseballLibrary.com

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.org

SABR.org

Freddie Fitzsimmons player file, Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

Notes

1 Eugene Murdock, “He Turned Rockne Down,” in Baseball Players and Their Times: Oral Histories of the Game, 1920-1940  (Westport, Connecticut: Meckler, 1991), 250.

2 Ibid.

3 The Sporting News, October 31, 1940, 5.

4 Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches (New York: Fireside, 2004), 205.

5 John Kieran, “Sports of the Times,” New York Times, July 16, 1935, 14.

6 Edward T. Murphy, Baseball Magazine, November 1940, quoted in Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches, 205

7 The Sporting News, October 31, 1940, 5.

8 Eugene Murdock, 250.

9 F.C. Lane, “Freddy Fitzsimmons and His Freak Wind-Up,” Baseball Magazine, June 1935, quoted in Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches,  205.

10 Leo Durocher and Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 145.

11 The Sporting News, February 19, 1931.

12 The Sporting News, May 9, 1940, 4.

13 Eugene Murdock, “He Turned Rockne Down,” 250, 262.

14 Bill James’ “range factor,” a metric used to evaluate the quality of defensive play, underscores that Fitzsimmons was easily one of the best pitchers of his generation; Fitzsimmons led the league for five consecutive years (1930-1934) and six times (1938) in range factor.

15 Tom Meany, “Crooked Arms Not All On Southpaws — Fitz Has One,” [unattributed article], June 9, 1943. Player Hall of Fame file.

16 John Drebinger, “Fitzsimmons Toils in Fielding Drills,” New York Times, February 27, 1929, 28.

17 Stanley Frank, “Fitz’s Fielding is Key to Hall of Fame Niche,” New York Post, July 3, 1937. Player Hall of Fame file.

18 Peter Williams, When the Giants Were Giants: Bill Terry and the Golden Age of New York Baseball (New York: Algonquin Books, 1994), 241.

19 The Sporting News, October 1, 1936, 4.

20 Charles E. Parker, “Scout’s Guess 12 Years Ago Beat Dodgers in 33 Games,” New York Telegram [no date, 1937]. Player’s Hall of Fame file.

21 Dan Parker, “Fitz Deal Terry’s Greatest Blunder,” New York Journal-American, July 30, 1940. Player’s Hall of Fame file.

22 The Sporting News, October 31, 1940, 5.

23 Leo Durocher, 143.

24 Tom Meany, “Crooked Arms Not All on Southpaws.”

25 The Sporting News, August 2, 1945, 10.

26 Fred Fitzsimmons as told to Stanley Frank, “Did the Best Teams Get In The Series?,” The Saturday Evening Post [no date], 112. Player’s Hall of Fame file.

27 Bill Lee, The Baseball Necrology (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), 131.

The Dodgers had another chance to stop the Yankees’ World Series winning streak at nine games.  Brooklyn had blown a golden opportunity to at least tie New York in the top of the seventh but Pee Wee Reese ran into an out and Dixie Walker’s subsequent groundout ended the threat.  Dodgers manager Leo Durocher was looking for another chance as well.  He was not having a good game from the dugout.  In the fifth, he did not pinch-hit for his starter with a runner on third, only to replace him four outs later when down another run.  A missed bunt sign (did Durocher give it?) led to the rally-killing double play in the seventh.  Now, in the ninth, down 3-2, Durocher and 68,540 spectators were not going to see All-Star catcher Mickey Owen hit with two on and one out.  No, Durocher had sent in Lew Riggs to hit for Owen in the fateful seventh despite Owen’s having had a run-scoring triple off Yankees starter Red Ruffing earlier in the game.  Instead, the multitudes were looking at backup catcher Herman Franks, with his .201 batting average in limited action. The Dodgers were carrying only two catchers.  Franks had to hit. If he came through, Dodgers fans would forgive Durocher’s missteps.  The baseball press might be a bit more forgiving.  Unfortunately for Durocher and the Dodgers, Franks, swinging at the first pitch, sent a hard grounder to Joe Gordon at second.  From there it was virtually automatic.  Gordon to Rizzuto to Sturm and Game One of the 1941 World Series went to the Yankees.  It was to be the only World Series appearance of Franks’ career and it was six years before he next saw major-league action.

Herman Louis Franks was born on January 4, 1914, to Edith and Celeste Alfonzo Franks (née Franch). The elder Franks, a photographer from the northern Italian village of Cloz, was 32 when he married the 18-year-old Coloradan Edith Dozzi, a coal miner’s daughter of Italian descent.  After the marriage, the pair moved to Price, Utah, a small but fast-growing city 120 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Herman was born in Price and spent the first six years of his life there, until his parents divorced in 1920.  Celeste left for Nevada.  Edith and Herman moved to Salt Lake City, where she established a grocery store and later a beauty salon. Mrs. Franks encouraged Herman to participate in athletics and he showed prowess at an early age. By 14, he was playing in men’s baseball leagues.  He was a four-sport (baseball, basketball, football, and track) standout at East High and, as he neared graduation in 1931, he was offered contracts and scholarships from the likes of the New York Yankees and the University of Notre Dame. Franks chose to remain close to his mother however, and enrolled at the University of Utah for the fall semester.

Franks played football, wrestled, and ran track in college. The lure of money proved too great, and he left the university in the spring of 1932 to play for the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League. The Stars, managed by former major-league infielder Ossie Vitt, were loaded with once and future big-league players, very fast company for the 18-year-old left-hand-hitting catcher.  Franks made his debut with the Stars on March 27, 1932, in an exhibition game against a Marine Corps team.  He acquitted himself well enough to earn a subheading in the Los Angeles Times game account: “Kid Catcher Impressive in Work Behind Bat.” The story included a short paragraph about Franks, mentioning that he was under contract, had been with the team only a few days, and would remain in Los Angeles during the season; i.e., the teenager would not be traveling with the grizzled veterans.1

Franks got into only four games with the Stars in ’32, garnering three hits in eight at-bats with a home run. Former major-league catcher, Johnny Bassler, at 38, yielded some catching time to teammates in 1933 with Franks the beneficiary for 16 games.  He played well as a receiver and hit .306 (11-for-36) with three doubles and a home run. In his home-run game, against the San Francisco Seals, Franks had three RBIs, but he had to share the spotlight with a player 11 months his junior, Joe DiMaggio, who hit two homers in a losing effort. 

Franks showed, at least with this limited sample size, that he could hit PCL pitching, but the 19-year-old needed experience (“more seasoning” in the parlance of the day).  It was likely a disservice to the youngster to have him under contract in the high minors when he should have been an everyday player in the bushes.  The year 1934 was a lost one for Franks’ baseball career.  He played, at least part of the season, for the East Side (Los Angeles) Brewers, a club in the semipro Southern California Baseball Managers’ Association. By early July though, he was playing for the Omaha Packers in the Class A Western League (still fairly high minors for a 20-year-old with very few minor-league at-bats).  He played in just two games for the Packers, going 1-for-3 with a triple.

Franks entered the St. Louis Cardinals’ famed farm system in 1935 and finally got the playing time he needed. The young catcher found himself in Jacksonville, Texas, playing in the Class C West Dixie League. He played in 128 of Jacksonville’s 132 games, catching 124 of them; he hit .284 with six homers and 24 doubles for the fourth-place Jax.  (The Jax won the West Dixie playoffs, becoming the last champion of the circuit, forced under by the Great Depression.) The Cardinals promoted Franks to the Texas League, where he shared the catching duties with future American Leaguer Bill Conroy and also was a teammate of future major-league manager Johnny Keane.  For the second-place Houston Buffaloes, Franks hit .260 with little power.  He started the 1937 season with the Buffaloes but after ten games he was back in the PCL, this time with a St. Louis affiliate, the Sacramento Solons.  After six years in the minors, Herman was back where he started, albeit with a different franchise. Franks caught 89 games for the Solons, 24 more than teammate Walker Cooper, while hitting .265 with 22 extra-base hits.

For his seventh minor-league season, Franks was back in Sacramento, a team that had gone from worst to first in the last two seasons for manager Reindeer Bill Killefer, It was perhaps Franks’ finest professional season. The 24-year-old “veteran” hit .274 in 143 games against the highest minor-league competition, with 29 doubles and 9 home runs. Franks caught 131 games, making just seven errors in 646 chances.  The Solons finished third in the regular season, then defeated the San Francisco Seals four games to one in the playoff finals. 

At the PCL meetings in San Francisco that November, Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey was present as a visitor.  He took the opportunity to tell The Sporting News “he was taking catcher Herman Franks … to Cardinal training camp [for 1939].”2 

In spring training, the 1939 Cardinals had 23-year-old future All-Star and MVP candidate Mickey Owen as their number-one backstop, but the number-two position on the depth chart was wide open.  The Cardinals were attempting to convert to catcher their outfielder Don Padgett, two years removed from hitting .314 as a rookie.  Franks had to compete against Padgett and a couple of other rookie receivers.  He made the Opening Day roster and, at age 29, made his major-league debut on April 27, 1939, against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Sportsman’s Park.  He batted for pitcher Bob Bowman in the bottom of the ninth, drawing a walk. Owen had been hit for in the ninth as well, so Franks stayed in the game defensively. In the bottom of the 11th with Don Padgett, at second, Franks hit a grounder to Pirates second baseman Pep Young.  Young bobbled and the hustling Herman beat the throw, allowing Padgett to score. 

Franks’ first major-league hit came in his first start, on May 2, 1939, at Braves Field in Boston.  The 5-foot-10, 187-pounder, just the ninth native of Utah to play in the majors, singled in his first at-bat off Bees starter Danny MacFayden, driving in Johnny Mize.  It was the first run in an eventual 2-1 Cardinals victory. But Franks injured his ankle getting back to first while avoiding a pickoff attempt and was out of the lineup for 22 days.  Between May 24 and July 2, he appeared in 12 games, including two starts, but could not deliver another hit.  On July 8 he was optioned to the Columbus (Ohio) Red Birds. Franks hit .297 there in 58 games and made just three errors.

The 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers had relied on 31-year-old left-handed-hitting Babe Phelps to perform most of the catching duties. Al Todd, 37, started 59 games, and two other players saw action behind the plate as well.  Perhaps Brooklyn wanted more power than Phelps or Todd could provide (44 extra-base hits between them) or maybe the Dodgers wanted to get younger.  In February 1940 GM Larry MacPhail purchased Franks’ contract from the Cardinals for a reported $25,000.3 The New York Times article describing the transaction said Franks was “highly regarded as a left-handed hitter.”4

After a slow start in spring training because of a thumb injury, Franks had a spectacular regular-season debut with the Dodgers. On April 23, 1940, the Dodgers took on the Boston Bees at Ebbets Field. Franks was the starting catcher (Phelps was nursing his own thumb injury) and batted seventh just ahead of rookie shortstop Pee Wee Reese  In his first Brooklyn at-bat, with two on and two out, Franks hit a Nick Strincevich offering over the right-field fence onto Bedford Avenue, tying the game. He also had two singles, a double, and three RBIs, helping Brooklyn to an 8-3 victory. After yielding for one game to 34-year-old veteran Gus Mancuso, Franks started again on April 25,went 2-for-4 with an RBI and helped the Dodgers beat the Phillies for their fifth consecutive win to start the season. 

Franks sat against the Phillies’ Lefty Smoll but started the next two games against the Giants at the Polo Grounds and went just 1-for-8 at the plate. The Dodgers, however, continued to win as they traveled to Cincinnati on April 29.  Although Phelps was ready to return, Durocher stuck with his hot lineup, which meant Franks was behind the plate for his third consecutive start and in a prime location to be a key part of some baseball history.  A win would give the Dodgers their ninth consecutive victory to start the season, tying the modern major-league mark. The win, if it came, would come at the expense of the powerhouse Reds, reigning NL champs who were on their way to another pennant and their first World Series title since the tarnished 1919 crown. The Dodgers did win and they won with style.  Their starter, Tex Carleton, allowed two free passes but nary a hit as the Dodgers won 3-0.  Franks was flawless behind the plate including gunning down Reds third baseman Billy Werber on the basepaths.  He was hitless himself but did walk and scored the first Dodgers run, the only one his batterymate would need.

The magic was not to last, however.  The Dodgers faced the 1939 NL MVP Bucky Walters the next day and lost to the dominating right-hander, 9-2.  Franks had a single in two trips to the plate before being replaced by pinch-hitter Babe Phelps in the sixth.  After that he was relegated to pinch-hitting, late-inning defensive replacement, and the occasional start.  Franks took a .300 average into a start on May 21 against the Cubs in Brooklyn but went 0-for-3 and never reached that benchmark again that season.  In fact, his average continued a steady decline as the season progressed, finishing near his low-water mark, .183 (24-for-131). Overall, Franks played in 65 games for the second-place Dodgers, the most he ever played in the majors. 

Brooklyn was not content to rely on Babe Phelps as its first-string catcher. Phelps, the last of Casey Stengel’s Daffy Dodgers still with the team, was a malingerer in Durocher’s eyes.  Phelps, likely suffering from neurasthenia, was a hypochondriac at least.  On December 4, 1940, the Dodgers sent Gus Mancuso, a minor leaguer, and $65,000 to the Cardinals for Franks’ former teammate, the 24-year-old Mickey Owen.  The fiery Owen, for his part, wanted more money from MacPhail than MacPhail was prepared to pay and was a holdout when the Dodgers traveled to Cuba for spring training in 1941. Phelps, too, balked at going to Havana, claiming influenza. With the paucity of catchers, Franks became the de-facto number one, at least in the early part of the preseason.  With Durocher regularly sending in substitutes for every position except for catcher, Franks saw a great deal of action,. Owen signed on March 2 and Phelps returned on April 7 when the Dodgers were in Atlanta playing their way north.  By now Franks was often playing with the “B” squad and although he was with the team when the season started, it was only to last for a couple of days.  On April 17 he was optioned to the Montreal Royals in the International League.

The Dodgers were battling the Cardinals for the pennant in ’41.  In early June, the lead changed seven times in nine games.  As the Dodgers prepared to travel for important games with the Western clubs, they found themselves two games behind the Redbirds in the standings but without a backup catcher.  Phelps was suffering from numerous ailments including exhaustion (he could not sleep for fear his heart would stop). He was not at the train station with the rest of the team and the train left without him.  Durocher was furious and had had enough.  The Dodgers suspended Phelps and recalled Franks from Montreal.  “I repeat, I’m through with Phelps. I don’t want him on my club. Franks is here now, and he’s my kind of player,” Durocher was reported to have said.5 Franks made it to St. Louis by June 14 and started the second game of the series.  He did not have the spectacular start to the season that he did the previous year but he provided valuable relief to the overused Owen. Franks started seven of the 13 games on the Western swing, contributing a key pinch-hit three-run home run on June 23 at Forbes Field.  The Dodgers, 10-3 on the road trip, were 6-1 when Franks started. He stayed with the club for the remainder of the season getting into 57 games, 54 at catcher.  He hit .201 (28-for-139) with seven doubles and a home run for the World Series-bound Dodgers. 

By the start of the 1942 season, the country was at war and world events overtopped the significance of most things, not excepting baseball.  Franks started the season with Montreal but by May 14 he was an ensign in the Navy.  From Buffalo, New York, where he enlisted, he was sent to Annapolis, Maryland, for 30 days of instruction, ultimately becoming a physical instructor in the naval-aviation program. He spent the next four years getting Navy cadets into shape and playing (and managing) baseball in Florida, Virginia, and Hawaii; he was discharged on January 9, 1946.

Now 32, Franks spent the entire 1946 season with the Montreal Royals, a now-famous team that won 100 games, won the International League pennant and championship series, and was led on the field by Jackie Robinson.  Franks had an excellent season, appearing in 100 games, catching 87 and hitting .280 with 14 homers and 16 doubles. He also walked a reported 72 times for an impressive on-base percentage of .424.  In 1947 Franks moved to the St. Paul Saints in the Triple-A American Association, another Dodgers farm team, where he became the player-manager.  He played in 49 games and guided St. Paul to a 52-74 record. In late August, though, his contract was sold to the Philadelphia Athletics and Franks was back in the big leagues. It was a fortuitous move for Franks; it allowed him to qualify for the major-league pension instituted the year before, and in Philadelphia, he met his future wife, Amneris Lorenzon. The two were married in 1948 and eventually had three children. Franks appeared in eight games for the A’s in ’47 and in 40 games in 1948. 

Durocher, who had become the Giants manager in midseason in 1948, was assembling his own coaching staff for 1949 and he wanted Franks.  Franks asked for and was given his release by the A’s. As a coach Franks would join Frankie Frisch and Freddie Fitzsimmons as coaches, with Franks working with the young pitchers. The New York Times said, “[Franks] is Durocher’s own choice, Leo having had Franks under his wing with the Dodgers.”6  It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship for Franks with Durocher and the Giants, not just in New York but in San Francisco as well.

Franks coached under Durocher in New York for seven seasons, a time that included two pennants (1951 and ’54) and a World Series championship when the Giants beat the highly favored Cleveland Indians (’54).  The 1951 New York Giants are famous for mounting one of the most incredible comebacks in professional baseball history.  After losing to Robin Roberts and the Phillies on August 11, the Giants, 13 games behind first-place Brooklyn, won 37 of the next 44 games to tie the Dodgers on the last day of the season.  They then beat the Dodgers, in the best-of-three playoff, punctuated by the most famous home run in baseball history, Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World.” 

In The Echoing Green, investigative journalist Joshua Prager, building on the work of others and conducting his own exhaustive research, including interviewing Franks, convincingly demonstrates that the Giants cheated and that Herman Franks was at the center of the cheating.  The cheating Prager portrays is sign-stealing, a much-honored skill if it is done on the field without mechanical or electronic aids.  Durocher, though, placed Franks in the Giants’ clubhouse office in the Polo Grounds, beyond center field, some 500 feet from home plate.  Armed with a telescope and thousands of hours of baseball experience, Franks would peer in on an opponent catcher’s signs and then, through a buzzer system Durocher had installed, he would signal bullpen catcher Sal Yvars who would signal the batter. Franks was there when Thomson came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth on October 3, 1951, although Thomson later told Prager he was concentrating so hard he never looked at Yvars. Franks never admitted anything.  He told the Associated Press in 2001, “I haven’t talked about it in 49 years. If I’m ever asked about it, I’m denying everything.”7

Durocher was out after the 1955 season (guys who aren’t that nice finished third) and Bill Rigney was in.  Rigney, naturally, wanted his own coaches; consequently Franks was not retained.  He did some scouting for the Giants, covering the Western United States, for the next two years, but Franks had real-estate and other business interests in Salt Lake City.  He was garnering a well-deserved reputation as an astute businessman.  He was becoming wealthy as well.  Franks downplayed it but newspaper articles often mentioned that he was likely a millionaire. 

Franks did not need the job; however, when the Giants established a new home, in San Francisco for the 1958 season, he was coaching third base under Rigney.  The position lasted just one season, though. He left the Giants to become the general manager and owner of the Salt Lake City Bees in the revamped Pacific Coast League. In 1961 he was the manager for part of the season, taking over from former teammate Freddie Fitzsimmons.  The major leagues came calling again in 1964. Giants manager Alvin Dark hired Franks again to coach third.  The Giants, with Mays, McCovey, Marichal, and Cepeda, finished a disappointing fourth.  Just hours after the season ended, Giants owner Horace Stoneham fired Dark and replaced him with Franks, inking him to a one-year contract at a reported $35,000.8 At what was characterized as a “hastily organized news conference,” the new manager was confident, stating, “[t]his club definitely has possibilities to win the pennant. If I didn’t think they could win it, I wouldn’t have taken the job. … We gotta win and we have to keep this group together and playing as a team.”9

Franks was at the Giants’ helm for the next four seasons, 1965-1968, winning 367 games (91.75 games/season), more than any other major-league club during that span. He managed MVP seasons by Willie Mays, multiple 25-plus-win seasons by Juan Marichal, and great seasons by Willie McCovey, Gaylord Perry, and others.  He did everything but win the pennant, finishing second in four consecutive seasons.  Before the 1968 season Franks had told Stoneham that if he didn’t win the pennant, he was quitting.  The ’68 Cardinals won 97 games, 9 more than the Franks-led Giants.  True to his word, Franks resigned.  Years later Joey Amalfitano, friend and confidant, saidthat Franks regretted telling Stoneham he would win it all or else. “He still had his juices flowing,” Amalfitano said.10

Franks returned to his business interests which now included being Willie Mays’ financial adviser.  In mid-August of 1970, Franks was in Chicago meeting Mays, who was in town with the Giants. Cubs pitching coach Joe Becker suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized.  Old friend and now Chicago manager Leo Durocher asked Franks to serve as his pitching coach for the remainder of the season and Franks agreed. The coaching gig did end with the season, though, and Franks was out of baseball for the next six years.  In November 1976, when Bob Kennedy, who managed the Franks-owned Bees in the early 1960s, became the vice president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, he fired Jim Marshall and hired Herman Franks. Franks, whom Kennedy characterized as having “a lot of money” and “not looking for work,” became, at 63, the oldest manager in the major leagues.  He indicated it would be “no problem for him.”  Further, he added, “[a]ll managers are in the same boat regardless of age. My goal for the Cubs is simple — win games and win a pennant before I retire.”11 The choice of Franks was met with some bemusement, especially by the Chicago press. “[T]he 63-year-old, tobacco-spewing, story-teller … needs to manage a baseball team about as much as he needs another apartment building.”  Franks, it was thought, must be bored; he was not hungry; he was not married to baseball.12

The Cubs won six more games under Franks in 1977 than they had in 1976, getting to .500 but still finishing 20 games behind the Phillies.  The ’78 Cubs managed only 79 wins and when the ’79 Cubs, falling out of contention after the All-Star break, were shut out by the Pirates on September 23, Fan Appreciation Day, Franks resigned.  Quitting during the season rarely goes well, but Franks’ resignation was particularly ignominious.  He apparently told a reporter he was fed up, said some of his players were crazy, and showed the reporter a check he had written for $24,000 to join a Salt Lake City Country Club for 1980. “You don’t think for a moment that I would shell out $24,000 and then come back here and manage. Next year, I’ll be at the country club every day, that’s where I’ll be.”  After it was reported, Franks tried to take it all back, then he resigned the same day. It was an unfortunate way to end his baseball career. Franks said age didn’t matter, but the age difference did.  He was brought up in baseball in a different era and could not relate to the players of the nascent free-agent era. Many of them could not relate to him either.  Overall, Franks managed 1,128 games, winning 84 more than he lost.

Amazingly, given the way Franks left, Cubs owner William Wrigley hired Franks as his interim general manager after Bob Kennedy, embarrassed by a 6-27 start, resigned in May 1981. Franks took the job “under certain conditions. I want complete control of the club, the players, and their agents,” he told the press.13  He held the job for the remainder of the lockout-shortened season and apparently wanted to shed the interim label and take the job for 1982, but it was not to be.  The Cubs finished 38-65 and went with Dallas Green as the new GM.  Franks was offered a job in the broadcasting booth and as head of the marketing department.  He declined both.  Jerome Holtzman, writing then for the Chicago Tribune, felt Franks didn’t get the credit he deserved, either as a field manager (“[n]obody ran a game better”) or as an administrator, “[Franks] has such a trigger mind that he expects others, who are slower, to react as quickly and decisively as he does. He should have been an owner, not an employee.”14

Herman Franks enjoyed a long life, living another 27 years after he left the Cubs. He continued his successful business career and, in addition to advising Mays, he worked as a financial adviser to Willie McCovey, Ernie Banks, and others. While he never worked in professional baseball again, he was active in player alumni groups and was active on the speaking circuit.  He was elected to the Utah Sports Hall of Fame in 1974 and there is a sports complex in Salt Lake City named for him.

On March 30, 2009, at age 95, Herman Franks succumbed to congestive organ failure.  He was survived by his wife of 61 years, Amneris, and their three children, Daniel, Herman Jr., and Cyndi.  Shortly before he died, Franks gave a cogent summation of his career to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter, “I was a good receiver. I had a good arm. I wasn’t a good hitter. I was good at handling pitchers. But I loved the game, and I always wanted to stay in it as a coach or manager.”15

Last revised: September 10, 2023 (zp)

Sources

Baseball-Reference.com.

Prager, Joshua, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World (New York: Vintage Books, 2008).

Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 “Stars Capture Easy Contest,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1932, A11.

2 “Rickey Talks Coast Back to Former Waiver Rule,” The Sporting News, November 1, 1938, 1.

3 “Herman Franks Sworn In as Navy Ensign,” Washington Post, May 15, 1942, 31.

4 “Dodgers Buy a Catcher,” New York Times, February 5, 1940, 24.

5 Robert W. Creamer, Baseball in ‘41 (New York: Viking, 1991), 180.

6 “Giants Win Race for Rookie Hurler,” New York Times, November 16, 1948, 41.

7 Richard Goldstein, “Baseball’s Herman Franks Dies at 95,” New York Times, March 31, 2009.

8 “Giants Drop Dark as Manager, Appoint Franks His Successor,” New York Times, October 5, 1964, 45.

9 “Giants Fire Dark; Franks Manager,” Boston Globe, October 5, 1964, 19.

10 John Shea, “Led Giants to Four 2nd-Place Finishes,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2009.

11 Bob Logan, “Kennedy Named VP: Franks New Cub Manager,” Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1976, E1.

12 Rick Talley, “Franks Could Be Just Rich ‘Guest,’ ” Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1976, E3.

13 “The Cubs Bring Back Franks as GM,” Washington Post, May 23, 1981, D2.

14 Jerome Holtzman, “Franks Might Stay With Cubs — If Asked,” Chicago Tribune, October 27, 1981, D3.

15 Jay Drew, “SLC Baseball Legend Herman Franks Dies at 95,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 31, 2009.

In recent years Gettel gained notoriety from a quote he gave to Joshua Prager of the Wall Street Journal in 2001 for a 50th-anniversary retrospective on the 1951 New York Giants and their remarkable turnaround in the second half of the season that culminated with Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round The World,” a walk-off three-run home run off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca that clinched the pennant for the Giants.1 Gettel spent the majority of the 1951 season with the Giants before being sold back to the Oakland Oaks in August. He appeared in 30 games for the Giants, primarily as a relief pitcher, and posted a 1-2 record with a lackluster 4.87 ERA. In his 2001 interview with Prager, Gettel said that the Giants had been stealing signs from opposing catchers since the middle of the 1951 season, employing an elaborate system that included a telescope, a buzzer system, and hand signs relayed from the bullpen to alert Giants batters about what to expect on an impending pitch. “Every hitter knew what was coming,” the then 83-year-old Gettel told Prager, and that knowledge “made a big difference.”

Gettel’s quote on the 1951 Giants’ sign-stealing was corroborated by teammates Sal Yvars and Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, both of whom were on the Giants’ roster throughout the season. In the Wall Street Journal piece, Prager asserted that Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning home run was in part the product of the Giants’ sign-stealing and capped off a half-season’s worth of spying on opposing pitchers organized by manager Leo Durocher.2 The Wall Street Journal’s article on the 1951 Giants was the first time that a journalist was able to get anyone from the team to affirm on the record that the Giants had stolen signs during the season. In 1962 a member of the 1951 Giants had been quoted anonymously in an Associated Press story as saying that the Giants had stolen signs from the Dodgers during their pennant-deciding three-game playoff series, including on the fateful pitch from Ralph Branca to Thomson.3

Allen Jones Gettel was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on September 17, 1917, to Edward A. and Sarah F. (Jones) Gettel. He was raised on the farm of his maternal grandfather, Nathaniel Jones, in Kempsville, Virginia, in rural Princess Anne County just outside the city of Virginia Beach. Gettel attended Kempsville High School and was signed as an 18-year-old by the New York Yankees in 1936. The Yankees assigned the young right-hander to their Class B Piedmont League affiliate in Norfolk. Over the next nine seasons, Gettel pitched successfully for seven different Yankees minor-league affiliates, garnering at least a .500 winning percentage in every season except his 1936 rookie year, when he was 0-1. A pitcher with as accomplished a minor-league pitching record as Gettel’s 93-64 (101-70 from 1936 through 1944) would have almost certainly gotten an opportunity at the major-league level in any other organization, but cracking the big-league roster of the Yankees during their late 1930s and early 1940s dynasty was an almost uniquely difficult task. The Joe McCarthy-era dynamic Yankees lineup of hitters was complemented by a pitching staff that included the likes of Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Johnny Murphy, Monte Pearson, Spud Chandler, Atley Donald, and Tiny Bonham.

The Yankees and their manager, Joe McCarthy, finally gave Gettel an opportunity to pitch in the major leagues in 1945. The pitching staff had been severely depleted during the 1944-1945 offseason by the draft call-ups of several pitchers.4 McCarthy employed the 27-year-old rookie as a starter and middle reliever on a fourth-place Yankees team that finished 6½ games behind Detroit. Gettel had a solid rookie year, compiling a 9-8 record with a 3.90 ERA. He displayed his characteristic control on the mound in 1945, walking a mere 53 hitters in 154⅔ innings.5 In 1946 Gettel continued to take advantage of his opportunity at the major-league level, posting a strong 2.90 ERA with a tough-luck 6-7 record in 11 starts and 26 total appearances on a Yankees team in transition.

Gettel’s ascension to the Yankees came at a time of regime change for the organization. In January 1945 the estate of Jacob Ruppert sold the club to Dan Topping, Del Webb, and Larry MacPhail. Sixteen months later, in May 1946, manager Joe McCarthy resigned because of poor health and pressure from the new owners to return the Yankees to the top of the American League standings.

The Yankees traded Gettel to the Cleveland Indians in December 1946 as part of a five-player deal that brought rookie catcher Sherm Lollar, later an All-Star with the Chicago White Sox, and former All-Star and longtime Tribe second baseman Ray Mack to New York. In addition to Gettel, the Bill Veeck-owned Indians also acquired right fielder and frequent pinch-hitter Hal Peck and left-handed pitcher Gene Bearden, who went on to become a 20-game winner for the Tribe in their 1948 world championship season. Gettel put together what was arguably his best major-league season for the much-improved 1947 Indians, who earned a fourth-place 80-74 finish one season after finishing 68-86, in sixth place, 36 games behind the 1946 pennant winners, the Boston Red Sox. Gettel became the Indians’ number-four starter during the 1947 season, garnering an 11-10 record with a 3.20 ERA. He rolled off five consecutive wins in August 1947, which drew the notice of The Sporting News, which asserted that Gettel had earned a spot in the 1948 rotation with his impressive performance. Never a power pitcher, Gettel excelled during the 1947 season with his excellent control of several off-speed and breaking pitches.6

The 1948 season proved to be a much different one for Gettel. The 30-year-old pitcher got off to a rough start for the upstart 1948 Indians, who found themselves one game out of first place on Memorial Day. In five appearances, he had a 0-1 record with a 17.61 ERA. He started two games and lasted a combined total of four innings, surrendering eight earned runs. On June 2 the Indians dealt Gettel and outfielder Pat Seerey to the White Sox for outfielder Bob Kennedy. Gettel continued to slump in June and July 1948 for the soon-to-be 101-loss White Sox, who used him primarily as a starter. On August 1 Gettel’s record stood at 2-7 with a much improved, though hardly impressive, 6.13 ERA. In the final months of the season, Gettel turned things around considerably, winning six of his last ten decisions and finishing with an 8-11 mark and a 4.01 ERA.7 Gettel got his only career opportunity to field a position other than pitcher on July 22, 1948, filling in at second base for four innings following the ejection of Cass Michaels in the second game of a doubleheader against the Red Sox. Gettel handled all three of his fielding opportunities cleanly and earned three assists in a 5-3 defeat.8 Gettel’s baseball talents off the mound also included unusual skill at the plate for a pitcher. He compiled a .228 career batting average.

During the 1949 season, Gettel struggled as both a starter and a middle reliever for the White Sox before being sold to the Washington Senators on July 12. His difficulties on the mound continued and Washington sold him to the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League on August 15. At that time he had a 2-7 record and an unhealthy 6.08 ERA.

In Oakland Gettel found his longest and most successful home as a player. He excelled against the Triple-A competition, going 4-0 with a 3.62 ERA in 12 appearances for the Oaks in the waning days of the 1949 season. He re-signed with the Oaks for the 1950 season and enjoyed his most successful season as a professional pitcher. Gettel went 23-7 with a 3.62 ERA for the PCL champion Oaks, earning him the first of his three spots on the PCL All-Star Team.

Gettel’s success in the Pacific Coast League drew the attention of the New York Giants, who acquired him from the Oaks in a six-player deal in October 1950. Though an ace in the PCL, Gettel proved unable to match that success in his return to the major leagues. He appeared in 30 games for the Giants, all but one as a reliever, and posted an ERA close to 5.00 with a record of 1-2. In late July 1951, the Giants sold Gettel back to the Oaks, where he resumed his successful career in the PCL. Gettel led the Oaks in wins in 1952 and 1953, tying the franchise record with 24 the latter season.9 Between 1949 and 1955, Gettel won 101 games for the Oaks and became one of their most popular players. The Oaks won two league championships during Gettel’s tenure with the team (1950, 1954).10

Gettel pursued a career as an actor during his years in the Pacific Coast League, appearing in several television and movie Westerns. He received the nickname “Two Gun” from his teammates in Oakland during the 1953 season when he earned a screen test with Paramount Pictures.11 Gettel was a skilled horseman who fostered the public persona of a cowboy by several times riding out to the mound on his palomino for the first inning.12 His best known work as an actor included an appearance as a villainous cowboy on the television show Steve Donovan, Western Marshal (1955) and a brief role in the Henry Fonda-Anthony Perkins Western Tin Star (1957).13

In 1955, at the age of 37, Gettel had his final major-league stint, with the St. Louis Cardinals, who had purchased him from the Oaks. He went 1-0 with an ERA of 9.00 in eight appearances in August and September. Gettel finished his major-league career with a 38-45 record and a 4.28 ERA. He played his last season in the Pacific Coast League in 1956 with the San Diego Padres. Gettel then worked briefly as a coach for Oakland and continued to pursue an acting career. He returned to professional baseball briefly in 1959, pitching in five games for the Asheville Tourists of the Sally League. After his baseball career he returned to his family farm in Kempsville, Virginia. In addition to farming, he operated a machine shop and worked in construction.14 Gettel died on April 8, 2005, in Norfolk, Virginia, at the age of 87. He is buried in the Emmanuel Episcopal Church Cemetery in Kempsville (now incorporated into the city of Virginia Beach).

This biography appears in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III. It also was published in “From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors“ (SABR, 2018), edited by Rob Edelman and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Los Angeles Times

New York Sun

New York Times

The Sporting News

Wall Street Journal

Baseball-Reference.com

FindAGrave.com

Notes

Francis Joseph Hardy was born on January 6, 1923 in Marmarth, North Dakota, a small community in the far southwestern corner of the state, to Frank and Helen Hardy. He had a sister, Grace, born three years earlier. She was born in Montana, so the family may have lived there prior to moving to North Dakota. His father was of Irish ancestry and a native of New York. His mother was born in Germany, having arrived in the United States when she was about 12 years old. Because of young Francis’s hair color, he soon acquired the nickname Red.

Frank Hardy was a mechanic for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, which had a roundhouse in Marmarth. He was also a member of the state legislature. In 1925, when Red was 2 years old, the railroad transferred his father to Minneapolis. While attending South High School there, Red excelled in all sports, and developed into a skilled pitcher. There his catcher and best friend was Don Wheeler, who also later played professional baseball. Wheeler and Hardy were minor-league teammates at one point. Wheeler’s brief major-league career saw him play in 67 games with the 1949 Chicago White Sox.

In 1942 Hardy was signed by the New York Giants’ organization and assigned to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in the Class C Northern League. There he won three and lost four in 14 games before joining the US Navy in August. He was considered for an appointment to the Naval Academy, but was assigned instead to Camp Croft in South Carolina. After completing training, he saw active duty during World War II as a Navy pilot.

Around this time Hardy married Beverly Mae Wilson, a Minneapolis native. Eventually the couple had three children, Barbara (born 1947), James (1950), and Susan (1951). Beverly died in 1968 and later Red remarried. His second wife was named Virginia. After his discharge from the Navy, Hardy attended college at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He pitched for the St. Thomas team in the spring of 1946, once throwing a 13-inning complete game in a 3-2 loss to the University of Minnesota.

After his college season ended, Hardy resumed his professional career with the Minneapolis Millers, the Giants’ affiliate in the Triple-A American Association. After just five games with the Millers, he returned to the Class C Northern League, with a new Giants affiliate in St. Cloud, Minnesota. There he had a 7-0 record with a 1.70 earned-run average.

After St. Cloud’s season ended, Hardy was recalled to Minneapolis, and was a regular in the Millers’ starting rotation the next two years, going 9-9 in 1947 and 10-10 in 1948. His Minneapolis club was a .500 team as well, finishing 77-77 each year.

After again starting the 1949 season in Minneapolis, Hardy was shipped to the Jersey City Giants, the Giants’ other Triple-A franchise. He won eight games the rest of 1949 and 13 back there in 1950. In the winter he pitched for Cienfuegos in the Cuban Winter League.

Around this time Hardy decided to try another sport. During the winter of 1949-1950, he played hockey for the semipro Minneapolis Bermans in the American Amateur Hockey League, scoring one goal and recording two assists in nine games. A great all-around athlete, he had the opportunity to play hockey professionally, but turned that offer down to concentrate on his baseball career.

The Giants began to realize that they had a pitcher who could be successful at the major-league level and invited Hardy to spring training in 1951 expecting that he would compete for a spot in the starting rotation. Manager Leo Durocher had three quality starters, Sal Maglie, Larry Jansen, and Jim Hearn, but little depth behind them. Durocher kept only one rookie pitcher on the Opening Day roster, George Spencer, but liked what he saw in Hardy.

To get a better look at all his prospects, Durocher scheduled a game between New York’s two Triple-A franchises, Minneapolis and Ottawa (which had replaced Jersey City). Hardy got the call to start for Ottawa and believed that, with a good showing, he would get an early call-up by the Giants. He was breezing along until in the late innings he faced a fellow rookie, a 19-year-old outfielder named Willie Mays. Hardy had retired Mays twice earlier in the game on his best pitch, a side-arm curve. He challenged Mays again with another curve, but this time Willie hit it over the clubhouse in left field for a home run.

Hardy started the 1951 season in Ottawa and flirted with no-hitters three times in a one-month span, only to lose all three no-hit bids in the late innings. On April 28 he had a no-hitter through six innings until he gave up a single in the seventh, and finished with a one-hitter, beating Springfield, 4-0. In his next start, on May 4, he again had a no-hitter through six innings but surrendered two singles in the seventh, the only two hits he allowed in the game. Hardy’s best opportunity for a pitching gem occurred on May 29 against Syracuse. He did not allow a hit through 8⅓ innings, until Vic Power stroked a single with one out in the ninth to spoil his no-hitter. If his third baseman, Billy Gardner, had not earlier committed two errors, Hardy would have completed his no-hitter before Power came to bat.

A 2.05 ERA in 13 games for Ottawa earned Hardy a June call-up to the Giants. In his first game, against the St. Louis Cardinals at Sportsman’s Park on June 20, he started the seventh inning and gave up a hit, intentionally walked Stan Musial, and hit the next batter. He was relieved by Dave Koslo, who induced an inning-ending double play without any runs being scored. .

Hardy’s second appearance came three days later, against the Cubs on June 23. He entered the game with two on and two out in the bottom of the fifth and recorded the final out. He started the sixth and surrendered three singles and two line-drive outs before manager Leo Durocher removed him from the game. Hardy was charged with one earned run. These two games were to be his only major-league appearances.

Hardy had been unable to pitch effectively in his brief time with the Giants because he had developed a sore arm that would cut his career short. He even changed his pitching style in an attempt to prolong his career and earn another shot at the major leagues. Early in his career, in addition to his side-arm curve, Hardy had a great fastball, and was often described as a “fire-baller.” Later, when sportswriters described Hardy’s pitching, he was called a “slow-baller.”

Hardy’s arm would not come around, and on July 1, 1951, the Giants traded him and Spider Jorgensen to the Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League for outfielder Earl Rapp. Still bothered by a sore arm, Hardy pitched poorly for Oakland, going 3-5 with a 5.56 ERA. In the offseason he tried to regain his form by playing winter ball in Ponce, Puerto Rico, but in 1952 his arm problems kept him out of action all year. Only 29 years old, Red permanently retired from baseball.

By this time, he and his family had moved from Minneapolis to Phoenix, Arizona. After his baseball career, Red worked as a salesman and was a business owner. He and his wife opened a novelty store and also operated a jewelry store in Phoenix. He was also a member of the local Elks Lodge and the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association. He became an outstanding golfer, participating in tournaments all over the country.

In 2002 Hardy attended a reunion with 11 other former Giants teammates at Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of “the shot heard round the world,” Bobby Thomson’s dramatic home run that gave the Giants the 1951 National League pennant.

Hardy died a year later in Phoenix on August 15, 2003, at the age of 80, and was buried in St. Francis Catholic Cemetery in Phoenix. He was survived by his wife, two daughters, a son, seven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Red Hardy’s career in baseball was a classic example of “what might have been” – one of countless pitchers whose promising career was cut short by an arm injury. By all accounts, he had tremendous potential that the Giants recognized when he was still in his teens. Had he played 50 years later, his injury likely could have been easily diagnosed and treated. However, according to Red’s daughter, he enjoyed his baseball career, had no regrets, and was thankful for every opportunity he had.

This biography appears in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III.

Sources

Unless otherwise noted, information in this biography was taken from: Curt Eriksmoen, “Pitcher Made Try for Big Leagues,” Bismarck (North Dakota) Tribune, March 29, 2008.

Information was also taken from telephone and email correspondence in 2013 with Barbara Groff, Red Hardy’s daughter.

ancestry.com

familysearch.org

baseball-reference.com

Francis “Red” Hardy obituary, published in the Arizona Republic, August 17, 2003.

The Giants signed Hartung in 1941. He had led his high-school team in Hondo, Texas, to the Texas state championship in 1939. After a solid season in Class C in 1942, his first year in Organized Baseball, Hartung was promoted to Double-A (today’s Triple-A) Minneapolis for 1943. He was on track to make the majors by 1944, but in 1943 he was drafted and assigned to the Army Air Corps.

Hartung played on military teams while serving in the Air Corps. In 1946 he reportedly went 25-0 as a pitcher and hit .567 for the Hickam Field Bombers, based in Pearl Harbor. The Giants offered him a $35,000 bonus to sign after World War II. Hartung had signed with the Giants before the war and they should have owned his rights after the war. Contemporary sources are unclear about the reason behind the bonus, but it might best be considered a signing bonus. After many years of success the Giants had finished last in 1946, and were eager for positive publicity while rebuilding their team.

That was a decent sum for a prospect who had never played in the majors, but Clint Hartung was no ordinary prospect. His size and strength awed some of the most hard-bitten baseball men. Reporters and PR men hyped Hartung as the player who would lead the Giants out of the wilderness of the second division back to the promised land of pennants. Instead, Hartung’s failure to deliver on this hype led Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract to create the “Clint Hartung Award” to designate each decade’s most overhyped prospect.1 Hartung won the award for the decade of the 1940s, of course. Heady predictions in the spring of 1947 to the contrary, Hartung did not lead the team to the pennant – it was Willie Mays, Don Mueller, Sal Maglie, and of course Bobby Thomson who led the Giants when they finally captured the 1951 flag. Ironically, Hartung is probably best remembered for pinch-running for the injured Don Mueller in the crucial ninth inning of the third playoff game.

Clint Hartung was born on August 10, 1922, in the South Texas town of Hondo, about 40 miles west of San Antonio, to Robert and Thelka Hartung. Robert was a 32-year-old farm worker and Texas native. Thelka’s unusual name was given to her by her German immigrant parents 28 years earlier when she was born in Texas. Neither of Clint’s parents finished grade school. Robert worked as a farmhand for most of his life, and Thelka was a full-time housewife. Clint was their second son; they had a son Harold, four years older than Clint.

The Hartung family probably never had much money during Clint’s youth. In the 1940 census, when war production was gearing up and farm prices were rising, Robert said he worked only six weeks in 1939, although he made $150 when he worked. Harold was making $75 a week working in a haberdashery, and young Clint made $50 a week in the summertime working for the county. That makes it even more remarkable that he may have turned down money to sign with the Giants in 1946 and remained in the Army.

Clint grew to be a strapping young man. A picture of his championship high-school team in the Hondo Anvil-Herald shows Hartung at least a head taller than the rest of his teammates. John Jennings, the catcher, would cut a sponge in half and insert it into his mitt to protect his hand when he caught the pitchers. He told the San Antonio Express years later that when Hartung took the mound I’d reach back and get the other half, too. When I got done catching him, my hand would look like a pair of blue jeans, all bruised and blue.”2

In the 1939 Texas state tournament, the Owls won three straight games to win the championship. Hartung pitched and won the second game, against Adamson, 3-2. He was the only Hondo pitcher named to the All-State Team. He was not the hitting star of the tournament. That honor was claimed by Hondo third baseman Grell. When not pitching for the Owls, Hartung played the outfield and first base.

Hondo was justifiably proud of its state champions. Just about every civic organization threw them a party. At one ice-cream social, players were served a cake in the shape of a baseball. The San Antonio Missions of the Texas league invited the Owls to watch a game from the owner’s box. Hartung may not have reached his major-league playing weight of 215 pounds in high school. The Anvil-Herald described him as a “long, lean, lanky” hurler when he held Austin High School to one hit during the season.3

Major-league scouts attended the Texas State Championship, and after Hartung graduated from high school in 1941, he accepted a $500 bonus to sign with the Giants. They assigned the 19-year-old to Minneapolis and he wound up with Eau Claire of the Class C Northern League, where he had a solid inaugural season in professional baseball, hitting .358 with 12 home runs and going 3-1 as a pitcher with a 3.60 ERA.

Hartung pitched and hit very well in the service leagues during World War II. By some reports he was slated for discharge before the 1946 season. The Giants were eager to have him return to the minors for more seasoning, but Hartung, probably due to his performance in service leagues, thought he was ready to go straight to the majors. He showed his independence by re-enlisting for another year rather than go back to the minors. Other reports say Hartung re-enlisted because he hadn’t heard anything from the Giants by the time he had to make a decision about joining up. No matter what the reason, Hartung re-enlisted in 1946, dominated the army teams he faced, and the Giants offered him a big bonus to join up with them in 1947.

Garry Schumacher was the public-relations man for the New York Giants during the 1940sand had a field-level seat to the Hartung phenomenon. Schumacher said, “When Clint went into the army he was smacking the ball 450 feet or further.”4 When the players started coming home from the war, Hartung remained one of the top prospects in the Giants’ system.

The Giants finished last in the National League in 1946, with a .396 winning percentage. They were happy to report in January 1947 that Hartung had come to terms with the team. Hartung went north with the Giants in 1947, though he may have benefited from minor-league instruction. For example, Hartung in 1947 threw only a straight fastball without much of a break. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers quotes Giants catcher Walker Cooper about Hartung: “His pitch just comes in there straight. It doesn’t jump. But it is awful fast.”(Cooper held up a left hand swollen like a balloon.)“It’s awful fast.”5

The hype for Hartung started long before he arrived for spring training in 1947. He was the savior who would lead the Giants out of the wilderness of last place toward the promised pennant. New York Daily News columnist Bill Gallo, wrote, “In all my time in sports, I had never seen a ballplayer so heralded before he had played game one in the major leagues. Not DiMaggio… not Mantle… not Williams nor A-Rod or any of them. … (T)his guy, at first look, was Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ruth and Bob Feller all rolled up into one.”6

The hype before spring training was so great that Giants publicist Schumacher told the press corps in Phoenix, “Hartung’s a sucker if he ever shows up. He should go straight to Cooperstown.”7Hartung contributed to the hype by having a great spring. He homered in his first at-bat in an intrasquad game, and smacked other long drives against major-league opposition. On March 9 against the Indians Hartung hit three doubles and a single in an 8-7 victory. His last double, in the bottom of the ninth, started a game-winning rally, and he scored the winning run on a single. Hartunghit five home runs during spring training, and manager Mel Ott started him in left field, batting third, on Opening Day. Hartung went 2-for-3 with a double in a Giants loss, and two days later went 2-for-3 to help the Giants to their first win.

By the end of April Hartung was hitting .276, with no homers, two doubles, and a triple. However, he was having some difficulties tracking fly balls. In mid-May Ott put him in the pitching rotation and after Hartung won his first four starts, Ott made him exclusively a pitcher, except for occasional pinch-hitting appearances. For the season he won nine games and lost seven, with a 4.57 ERA. He batted .309 with four home runs and 13 RBIs in 34 games. (Hartung batted .333 and slugged .600 after Ott limited him to pitching. The Giants jumped from eighth place in 1946 to fourth in 1947. As a 24-year-old who proved he could pitch and hit in the major leagues, Hartung seemed poised for a good career, if not perhaps the phenomenal career that had been predicted.

Hartung did not develop and 1947 turned out to be his best year. In 1948 he pitched over 150 innings and went 8-8, but his ERA rose to 4.75, his batting average dropped to .179, and he hit no home runs. Halfway through the 1948 season, Ottwas fired as manager. His successor, Leo Durocher, kept Hartung as a pitcher through the end of the season. In 1949 he said, “So far as I can see, there’s nothing wrong with Hartung that wise counsel can’t correct.”8 Durocher assigned coach Frank Shellenback, a veteran pitcher, to room with Hartung and provide that wise counsel, but Hartung didn’t improve.

In 1949Hartunghad his first losing season with a record of 9-11 and an ERA of 5.00. Batters appeared to have solved his fastball, and he never developed a strong second pitch. As a batter in 1949 he tied his career high in homers with four, but hit only.190. That was good hitting for a pitcher, but not what had been predicted for Hartung a couple of years earlier, when he was supposed to be the second coming of Christy Mathewson and Babe Ruth.

Durocher was in the process of making over the Giants into a team that he believed could win. He traded a lot of the players from Ott’s teams, but decided to keep Hartung. Before the 1950 season he told a New York Times reporter that he thought Hartung was pitching well. Hartung did not pitch well in April, and his ERA quickly rose over 6.00. Durocher lost confidence in Hartungand didn’t pitch him at all after August.9

Hartung did hit .302in 43 at-bats in 1950 with a slugging average of .605 and three home runs. Durocher used him as a backup first baseman, right fielder, and left fielder. Hartung couldn’t push Don Mueller, Bobby Thomson, or Whitey Lockman out of a starting job, but he did make a positive contribution to a team that finished third in the National League. Meanwhile, manager Durocher continued to acquire hustling, smart ballplayers like Eddie Stanky and Alvin Dark to play second and short. He brought Sal Maglie to the pitching staff. The Giants team Durocher assembled for the 1951 team was the antithesis of the big slow-footed sluggers who started for Mel Ott.

One thing didn’t change much in 1951: Hartung’s role on the team. He was a little-used backup in 1950, and he remained in that role in 1951. Durocher started the season platooning Hartung with Mueller in right field, but he abandoned that strategy by May. Hartung didn’t pitch at all, and played in only 21 games. In this relatively small sample size, his batting average was .205 and his only extra-base hit a double. However, he did have a great seat on the bench for one of the most extraordinary seasons in baseball history, as the Giants came from 13 games back to tie the Dodgers and force a playoff.

Given that Hartung barely played during the season, it would take an emergency before Durocher would use him in the playoff. That emergency arose in the bottom of the ninth inning of the third game. The Giants, down 4-1, started a rally off an exhausted Don Newcombe. Alvin Dark and Don Mueller singled. After Monte Irvin popped up, Whitey Lockman doubled down the left-field line, scoring Dark and sending Mueller sliding into third. Mueller slid awkwardly and broke his ankle. As he was being carried off on a stretcher, Durocher sent the Hondo Hurricane in to pinch-run. That’s how Hartung was on third base when Bobby Thomson’s home run made Hartung one of the most famous pinch-runners in baseball history. With Mueller out for the World Series, Hartung pinch-hit in Game Two and started in right field in Game Five, but went 0-for-4 as the Giants lost to the Yankees.

Hartung returned to spring training with the Giants in 1952. Some writers speculated that he would be good insurance if Willie Mays was drafted. There was some talk that Hartung was learning to play second as a way to stay with the team. Durocher just had no place for Hartung on his team, and the Giants optioned him to Minneapolis. Hartung hit well as an outfielder for the Millers – .334 with 27 homeruns in 109 games – and the Giants recalled him in early August. He hit three home runs in 28 games but batted only .218 and slugged .385. On August 15 he hit home runs in both games of a doubleheader against the Boston Braves, which accounted for two-thirds of his homers for the year. The Giants finished second in what proved to be Hartung’s last major-league season.

Hartung turned 30 in 1953 and spent the entire season with Minneapolis, hitting .276 with 19 home runs. No major-league team wanted to sign a 30-year-old outfielder who had already proved he couldn’t be a major-league regular. Hartung stuck it out in the minors for another two years. Before the 1954 season the Giants sold his contract to the Havana Sugar Kings of the International League. He hit.267 with 14 home runs. In 1955 Havana sold Hartung to the Cincinnati Reds. He played for Oakland in the Pacific Coast League, Nashville in the Southern Association, and ended the season back with the Sugar Kings, where he hit .224 with five homers in 34 games. That was his last season in Organized Baseball. Hartung was 33, his skills were declining, and he returned to Texas.

Hartung took a job with an oil refinery in Sinton, Texas. He worked as a foreman and also played semipro ball for the Sinton Oilers. Hartung helped lead the Oilers to the national semipro title in the annual tournament. Hartung hit a home run that won the championship game and batted .457 over the seven-game tournament in Wichita, Kansas. The Oilers were coached by Jack Trench picking up a little extra money outside of his normal job as freshman baseball coach at the University of Texas. Trench said Hartung told him, “It was a big thrill after all his experience in the major leagues. He’s very happy in semipro ball.”10

In 1957 Giants PR man Gary Schumacher said of Hartung’s career, “Hartung had everything. He was a big, strong, good-looking kid who was just getting back from the Army. Though Hartung had never played in a big league game, he made the cover of a national magazine that spring.” That disappointment in Hartung stayed with Giants fans for several years to the point where Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, joshed in 1987 that his partner in a fantasy baseball league “proved to be the worst judge of baseball ability since a scout signed Clint Hartung.”11

Cuomo, who himself had a one-season career in the minor leagues, was not being fair. Hartung had great baseball ability, as shown by his success in the minor leagues and his domination of leagues once he was out of baseball. He didn’t have the ability to be the next Babe Ruth, but how many players do? One wonders how Hartung would have performed had he spent a little more time in the minors working on his game in 1947 and 1948 instead of riding the pines on the Giants bench, or if he had concentrated on either pitching or hitting instead of attempting both. Perhaps he would have been a better player – or again, perhaps not.

Hartung stayed in Sinton for the rest of his life. He raised his family, and tried his best to live a quiet life. At various times reporters tracked him down to ask about his career and he usually wouldn’t have much to say. In July 1983Texas Monthly published an article about Hartung at the age of 60. The reporter described Hartung as weighing 245 pounds, some 30 pounds heavier than his playing weight. His home was “bereft of baseball memorabilia.” Hartung “smoked Bel Air filters and the closest he gets to playing sports is his easy chair.”

Hartung did say that the Giants’ winning the 1951 pennant “was like knocking out Joe Louis,” but when asked if he was better as a pitcher or an outfielder, he said “neither.” Hartung went on to say that he had no regrets about his career. “When the bubble bursts, that’s it,” he said. “When it’s over, it’s over.”12

Hartung’s wife, Carolyn, said, “You gotta know Clint. He enjoyed it at the time and when it was over that was the end of it. That’s the way he thinks. He doesn’t let anything bother him. I think they should have built a monument to him in Hondo.” When Hartung heard Carolyn say that, he said, “No. They shouldn’t. Yesterday’s gone.”13

Hartung’s friends from the Giants thought he had a lot of potential, but was hurt in his career development by his lack of minor-league experience. Don Mueller, who roomed with him on the Giants, said, “Clint had all the talent in the world, but he was just a big gangly kid with long floppy arms and big ears who just wasn’t ready mentally. He should have been nurtured in the minors.”14

In 1957Hartung’scompany eliminated its national championship semipro team. He spent the rest of his post-baseball life in Sinton, working at various oil-field jobs. He raised children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Hartung died on July 7, 2010, at the age of 87. Virtually every obituary mentioned two things: the amazing hype that accompanied his major-league debut in 1947, and pinch-running for Don Mueller and scoring one of the runs that beat the Dodgers in the 1951 playoff. For himself, Hartung looked forward, not back. He told the Texas Monthly reporter in 1983, “If you wake up in the morning and it’s raining, it’s raining. If it’s sunny, then it’s sunny. I stopped worrying about things a long time ago.”15

This biography appears in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III.

Sources

Durocher, Leo, with Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975).

James, Bill, and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

James, Bill, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

Kahn, Roger, Memories of Summer (New York: Hyperion Books, 1997).

Smith, Red, Red Smith on Baseball (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2000).

Hondo Anvil-Herald

Life

Look

New York Daily News

New York Times

San Antonio News Express

Sweetwater (Texas) Reporter

Texas Monthly

baseball-reference.com

mlb.com

retrosheet.org

wikipedia.com

Notes