Cyril “Cy” Buker: Coaching in Wisconsin and Pitching for the Dodgers in the 1940s

In 1941, the year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and propelled America into World War II, the Brooklyn Dodgers won the National League pennant by two and a half games over the St. Louis Cardinals. But the New York Yankees won the World Series in five games, thanks in part to a critical error by Dodger catcher Mickey Owen in Game Four, with the Yankees ahead in the series, two games to one.

In the ninth inning of the fourth game, with the Dodgers leading 4-3 and two strikes on the batter, Owen let Hugh Casey’s third strike on Tommy Henrich get under his glove and roll away. Henrich made it to first, the Yankees scored four runs to win the game, 7-4, and New York wrapped up the fall classic with a 3-1 victory the following afternoon.

The Dodgers recovered and contended all through the 1942 season, but the youthful St. Louis Cardinals, led by stars such as Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, and brother batterymates Mort and Walker Cooper, finished first by two games. However, the talent-rich Yankees, again paced by greats like Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Keller, Joe Gordon, and Bill Dickey, won another World Series in five games.

In 1943, the first year that World War II seriously affected the manpower of the major leagues, Brooklyn finished third behind St. Louis and the Cincinnati Reds. But the Dodgers plummeted to 23½ games off the pace in 1943, while the Cardinals, with another year of experience, had become the league’s powerhouse.

Brooklyn declined even further in 1944, finishing in seventh place, 42 games below the pennant-winning and World Series champion Cardinals. But the Dodgers began to improve in 1945, contending for the NL pennant and finishing in third place, 11 games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs and only two games back of the Cardinals—the team hurt least by the wartime manpower drain.

By 1945 Leo Durocher, who began managing the Dodgers in 1939, was virtually the only man left from the pennant-winning 1941 club. With a mixture of younger and older talent, Durocher kept his team in the pennant race by using a variety of lineups and an assortment of pitchers.

In 1941, Durocher’s lineup had included stars such as Dolph Camilli at first base, Billy Herman at second, future Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese at short, Pete Reiser and Dixie Walker in the outfield, Owen behind the plate, and 22-game winners Kirby Higbe and Whit Wyatt on the mound.

For Brooklyn’s last wartime season, Walker, who was drafted into the military, still played right field, and Eddie Stanky, whom the Cubs traded to the Dodgers a few weeks into the 1944 season, became the names most recognizable to Flatbush fans.

What was it like to pitch in the Dodger farm system and for the big league club during the mid-1940s? 

A good example is Cyril “Cy” Buker, a right-handed pitcher who compiled a 7-2 record for Brooklyn in 1945. During his only big league season, Cy showed that he was not the stereotypical “wartime” player.

Brooklyn’s top winner in 1945 was Hal Gregg, a hard-throwing 24-year-old in his third major league season. Gregg led the National League in walks in 1944 and 1945. But in ’45 the tall right-hander produced his best season in a nine-year career, going 18- 13 with a 3.47 ERA. In 1946, with many big leaguers returning from military service, Gregg had a 6-4 mark, but a sore arm kept him from surpassing that win total in five more seasons.

Brooklyn had three pitchers who won 10 games in 1945. Rookie Vic Lombardi had a 10-11 record with a 3.31 ERA. Considered small at 5’7″ and maybe 160 pounds, the southpaw also reached double digits in wins in 1946 and 1947 with the Dodgers and in 1948 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Overall, Vic posted a 50- 51 ledger during his six-year major league career.

Curt Davis went 10-10 with a 3.25 ERA in 1945. A 6’3″ right-hander who won 19 games for the Philadelphia Phillies in his rookie season of 1934, Davis enjoyed three more seasons with 15 or more wins, making the NL All-Star team in 1936 and 1939. But the Greenfield, Missouri native had no record in 1946, his final fling at the majors.

Tom Seats, who first pitched in the majors for the Detroit Tigers in 1940, spent most of the war years as a shipyard worker while also hurling for San Francisco in the Pacific Coast League. Signed by the Dodgers in 1945, Tom was 10-7 with a 4.36 ERA. After failing to stick with Brooklyn in 1946, the 5’11” southpaw returned to the PCL for three seasons.

The Dodgers had two other hurlers who matched Buker’s seven-win total. Art Herring, a 5’7″ right-hander who broke in with the Tigers in 1929 but who was out of the majors from 1940 through the 1943 season, went 7-4 with a 3.48 ERA. A good relief pitcher during past seasons, Art won all seven games in 1945 as a starter. The Oklahoma native also won seven times in 1946 but only once in 1947, his final big league season with the Pirates.

Les Webber, a right-hander who first made it with the Dodgers in 1942, had a 7-3 mark with a 3.58 ERA in 1945. The California native, who was 4-F with a heart murmur, also won seven games in 1944. Later slowed by arm and rib injuries, Les was 4-4 in 1946 and had no decisions with the Cleveland Indians in 1948, his final year in the majors.

Other Dodger pitchers included young Ralph Branca, who was 5-6 with a 3.04 ERA, and Clyde King, a 6’1″ right-hander from Goldsboro, North Carolina. Both were second-year hurlers.

Branca, a hard-throwing right-hander who would enjoy a 12-year major league career with a 88-68 lifetime mark, became best known for the gopher ball he threw to Bobby Thomson in the Dodger-Giants playoff finale on October 3, 1951. But he won 21 games for Brooklyn in 1947, plus he won game six of the ’47 World Series. After the 1951 playoffs, Buker suffered an offseason pelvis injury that hurt his subsequent career.

King went 5-5 with a 4.09 ERA in 1945. Later a manager and coach in the majors, Clyde worked mainly out of the bullpen. His best of seven major league seasons came in 1951, when he went 14-7 for the Dodgers—recording 13 of the wins in relief.

A newcomer on Brooklyn’s nine-man staff, Buker had to prove himself. He also had to fit into the mentality of the times, a mind-set where big league clubs used contracts with reserve clauses to control players as if they were property. The independent-thinking Cy would not prove to be a good “company man.”

Born February 5, 1919, in Greenwood, Wisconsin, Cyril grew up thriving on sports. He played several positions in sandlot ball and at Greenwood High, graduating in 1936. Playing for the University of Wisconsin, he mainly pitched.

“I had a pretty good arm when I was a kid,” Buker explained in a 1999 interview, “and I just kept on throwing, that’s all. I started out in the county leagues, and in high school, and eventually at the University of Wisconsin.”

An all-around athlete, Buker graduated from Wisconsin with a bachelor of science degree in 1940. With the German blitzkrieg raging in Europe, Cy lined up a job teaching and coaching for the fall. He also decided to give professional ball a shot.

Signed by New York after Wisconsin, Buker was sent to Clinton, Iowa, of the Class B Three-Eye League. “I was signed by Heinie Groh of the Giants out of Wisconsin. I started at Clinton in the Three-Eye League, and I hurt my elbow right away. They didn’t have any surgery for that kind of thing, and I thought I was done,” he said in 1999.

“I won my first game, 7-1, against Moline. But the next time out, I couldn’t throw the ball up to the plate. My elbow was locked.

“They sent me over to Wausau in the Northern League. I told them, ‘I can’t throw.’ So I jumped the ball club and came home at the beginning of August. I went to work, teaching and coaching all sports at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.”

Cy played semi-pro baseball in 1941:

“I didn’t go back to organized ball until 1942. I liked to play, so I played second base in semi-pro ball. I didn’t have much of a throw there. By golly, by the end of 1941 I noticed that my arm was getting stronger! At the end of the season, I pitched a ball game and did real well. I decided I would give it another try.”

In 1941, Cy took a job at Shullsburg in southern Wisconsin. The following summer he got a better offer from Eau Claire. For three years he coached all sports and taught a variety of classes at Eau Claire, until signing with Brooklyn in early 1945.

“It’s a funny thing, but I never put in a full season with any ball club. When I started out, I was in the lower minors. I would teach until we got into the latter part of May or early June, and I would join the ball club. Then I’d jump the ball club and come back to school when football started.

“In 1942 I started out with the White Sox at Wisconsin Rapids in the Class D Wisconsin State League, and I did pretty well.”

Considering that he was coming off arm problems, Buker produced a solid season for seventh-place Wisconsin Rapids, going 5-5 with a 6.88 ERA.

“We had a bad ball club. I managed to win a few, but my arm got stronger as the year went along. At the end of the season, with World War II and everything, the league blew up and I was a free agent again.

“So I went back to coaching and teaching full-time. I didn’t go into organized ball in 1943. I stayed up at Eau Claire. I was coaching at Memorial High, which at that time was the biggest high school in the state. I had a good job. I made $2,000, which was a lot of money in those years.

“When I started out in the Wisconsin State League, I got $80 a month. I got an extra $10 for driving the bus. We had a center fielder by the name of Decker at Wisconsin Rapids. He was married and had two kids, and he made $35 a month.

“Those were the days when you stayed in fleabag hotels with no air conditioning and sometimes slept three to a bed. We got a dollar a day for meal money!

“We liked to play ball. That’s why you played in the 1940s. That was baseball in the lower leagues. Today, nobody would go through that kind of stuff.”

After concentrating on coaching during the 1943 season, Cy signed with St. Paul in 1944:

“In the spring of 1944 I got a call from St. Paul in the American Association. I told them I couldn’t join the club until the 3rd or 4th of June. I threw batting practice and they liked what they saw.

“From June until the end of the year, I went 13-3. Two of those are playoff games, and they don’t show up in the record. But I had a real good year.”

Working in 25 games, Buker came through with a 3.23 ERA to go with his 11-3 regular-season mark. Fourth-place St. Paul defeated Toledo in the semifinals, four games to three, and Cy won two games. But Louisville beat St. Paul in four straight games to capture the league title.

In early 1945 Buker, still teaching at Eau Claire, talked it over with his father and decided to give it a shot with Brooklyn.

“I got a leave of absence from Eau Claire and joined the ball club. I wasn’t there two days before I was in the Army. The Army finally released me about May 15. I was in what they call the observation unit. I had asthma, and I was wheezing up a storm.

“I got in my first game for the Dodgers just after the middle of May. From then until the end of the year, I was in the game quite a bit.

“The thing I want to stress is that there was no early man, no middle man, no late man. If you went to the bullpen, you got up in the first inning to warm up, or the second, or any other inning. It went that way through all nine innings.

“We had a bunch of young, hard throwers like Ralph Branca, Hal Gregg, Vic Lombardi. They were wild as hell. If you went to the bullpen, you could crank up for nine innings and never get in the ball game. The next day it would be the same thing all over again. That’s the way Leo Durocher ran things.”

Still, Buker made the most of his opportunity with the Dodgers. Pitching mainly in relief in 1945, he produced a 7-2 record with a 3.30 ERA. Brooklyn contended for the pennant until July, finishing third with an 87-67 record, behind the Cubs and the Cardinals.

The 5’11” 190-pound right hander pitched whenever he was needed. For example, he recalled one memorable afternoon in Cincinnati when he lost and won games in both ends of a double-header. On Tuesday, September 11, with the temperature near 100 degrees at Crosley Field, Buker came on to relieve Art Herring in the bottom of the eighth. Cy pitched scoreless ball for two innings.

But in the Cincinnati tenth, Kermit Wahl led off with a single. Pitcher Joe Bowman advanced the runner with a groundout. Dain Clay was safe on an error by Dodger first sacker Eddie Stevens. Buker walked pinch-hitter Dick Sipek to set up a force at any base. Instead, Al Libke bounced one through the legs of second sacker Eddie Stanky.

The Reds won, 5-4, and Buker left the field:

“I’m in the clubhouse taking a shower after the game and taking my time, figuring my day’s over,” Buker recalled. “Here comes Charley Dressen, whistling that shrill whistle he had, saying, ‘Cy, get out in the bullpen. Leo wants you right now!’

“I didn’t have any choice. It was either go out there or go back to St. Paul. So I put my uniform back on and went to the bullpen.”

The first-game loss lowered Buker’s record to 4-2. In the second game, he relieved Clyde King in the fourth and allowed one run on a two-out wild pitch. After that, he hurled scoreless ball and the Dodgers came from behind to win, 11-6.

The victory upped Cy’s mark to 5-2, thanks to nine-plus innings of relief on a sweltering afternoon. The next day he spent much of the afternoon warming up in the bullpen as Brooklyn lost, 3-2, to St. Louis at Sportsman’s Park. And so it went in 1945 for the stocky right-handed ace.

Buker hurled 87½ innings spread over 42 games. By mid-July, one New York Times story called him “Durocher’s fireman.”

The 26-year-old rookie won twice as a starter, earning his first victory by beating the Phillies in Philadelphia, 9-2, on Thursday, June 21, with relief help in the eighth and ninth frames from Vic Lombardi.

On Wednesday, July 18, in the second game of a double-header at Wrigley Field, Cy started and pitched the first 6½ innings and beat the Cubs, 9-5, with relief help from Tom Seats and Ralph Branca.

That lifted the Wisconsin hurler’s record to 4-0. Mostly, however, he worked out of the bullpen, often two or three innings at a time.

Two examples illustrate the ups and downs of a relief pitcher. On Tuesday, July 24, in St. Louis, Cy, pitching in relief of Lombardi and Gregg, suffered his first loss (making his record 4-1), as the Cardinals beat the Dodgers, 7-6.

With the score tied at 6-all in front of a ladies night crowd of 15,543, Cy entered the game in the ninth inning and gave up a leadoff single to Marty Marion. Pitcher George Dockins laid down a sacrifice bunt, moving the runner to second. Marion scored the game winner on a line single to right by Augie Bergamo.

Four days later at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, Buker saved Hal Gregg’s 13th victory, a 2-1 triumph over the Boston Braves, with one pitch. A rainy-day crowd of 10,688, including 5,000 youthful war-bond salesmen who received free tickets, saw Gregg falter in the ninth. With the Dodgers ahead, 2-0, the right-hander yielded two-out singles to Butch Nieman and Whitey Wietelmann.

Manager Leo Durocher summoned pint-sized Vic Lombardi to put out the fire. But Lombardi walked Chuck Workman and Tommy Holmes to force in one run. Buker got the call with the bases loaded. He fired a fastball to Bill Ramsey. Ramsey lined a shot above the head of third baseman Frenchy Bordagaray, who leaped high and made a great catch, allowing Buker to walk off the mound with a save.

Cy won his seventh victory in Flatbush on Wednesday, September 19, pitching in relief of Lombardi. Called from the pen in the top of the seventh with no outs, the bases loaded, and the Dodgers ahead, 3-2, Buker induced Danny Gardella to ground into a forceout—but Bill Jurges scored the tying run. When shortstop Eddie Basinski booted a routine ground ball, Leon Treadway scored the go-ahead run.

Buker retired the side and pitched scoreless ball for the last two innings. In the bottom of the seventh, his teammates rallied for two markers, with Frenchy Bordagaray’s single knocking home the eventual game winner.

With the season nearly over, Buker returned to teaching and coaching at Memorial High. When Branch Rickey sent the right-hander a 1946 contract with a raise of $500 above the major league minimum of $5,000, Cy reacted by tearing it up and mailing the pieces back to Brooklyn.

A month later, Rickey sent another contract, this one with a $1,500 raise. But this contract was contingent upon Buker surviving the cut-down date. Deciding to pursue his baseball dream and place his coaching career on hold, he resigned from Memorial High. Buker recalled arriving at spring training three weeks late:

“I could see that everyone was mad at me. Nobody would even talk to me. I was assigned to the B squad immediately, without throwing a ball. It went that way throughout spring training and into the season.

“I sat on the bench. I never pitched one ball in 1946. They didn’t want anyone to see me. I sat on the bench until the final hour of the last day before cutdown, and, you guessed it. I was optioned to Montreal.

“I got no $1,500 and no chance to pitch. I did not throw a single ball in the majors in 1946!”

In fact, the Wisconsin native never pitched another game in the big leagues. In 1946 the Dodgers, stockpiling players in the minors under tight-fisted general manager Branch Rickey, optioned the right-hander to Montreal of the triple-A International League.

Moving to Montreal, Buker produced a fine season, getting off to a 10-2 start. But he was involved in a collision at home plate and injured his pitching arm and hand. Sidelined for several weeks, Cy finished the season with a 12-7 record and a 3.81 ERA

“I didn’t pitch much for six weeks. But when I came back, I didn’t have the same kind of stuff. I ended up winning only two more ball games the rest of the year, and I lost five. But my earned run average was around 2.00 in the first part of the season.”

Buker liked playing ball with Jackie Robinson. Cy recalled that Robinson was installed as the second baseman:

”As the season moved on, Jack started to improve. As the season progressed, he got better and better. He was a pretty good ballplayer by the end of 1946.

“Jack could run, and at the end, he could turn the double play as well as anyone. He got a lot of ‘leg hits.’ Anything on the ground on the left side, he’d beat it out.

“We had a heck of a club. We won that league by something like 18 or 19 games!” Buker, however, never fully recovered from the hand injury. When the Dodgers optioned him to Montreal in 1947, he refused to go. Brooklyn then sent him to St. Paul, where Cy came through with an 8-8 record and a 5.31 ERA. He started the 1948 season with the Milwaukee Brewers and finished with Kansas City. Going 4-4, he saw his ERA rise to 8.51.

In 1949 Buker refused to report and was suspended for the season. He signed to teach and coach at Greenwood, Wisconsin, where he stayed 12 years. In the summer of 1951, Cy took a final fling at the game he loved. Pitching and working with young players in the single-A Western League, he compiled a 2-6 record with three clubs.

After he retired from teaching and coaching in 1970, the Wisconsin native was inducted into the state’s High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame. Over the years he has kept active by doing bodywork and painting on classic automobiles.

Sports card entrepreneur Larry Fritsch, who played football, basketball, and baseball at Spenser High in the 1950s against Buker-coached teams, recalled, “When I learned that Cy had played in the big leagues, I searched for a photo of him and included it in our first One-Year-Winner card set. I respected him as a coach and a man, and I thought a Buker card would be a welcome addition to the set.”

One of the best relief pitchers in the National League in 1945, Buker was seldom hit hard. The fastballing right-hander remembers giving up only two home runs, one to Andy Pafko of the Cubs and another to Whitey Kurowski of the Cards.

Proving to be more than a wartime player, Cy Buker made a major contribution to a Brooklyn club that contended for the pennant much of the summer. Despite his value to the team in 1945, when the veterans returned in 1946, he was not given a chance—due at least in part to his contract dispute with the Dodgers.

Surviving the stiff competition of the big leagues and the upper minors, the longtime coach and teacher has few regrets about his accomplishments. He loved baseball, and he loved coaching young men. But after his 7-2 mark and strong relief pitching in 1945, he deserved a chance to make the Dodgers or another team in 1946.

Despite the ups and downs of his diamond career, Cy Buker recently observed, “I wouldn’t trade those days in baseball for anything in the world.” 

JIM SARGENT is a Professor of History and Dean of the Social Science Division of Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke. His last article for TNP was on June Peppas and the All-American League.