The announcement on November 5, 1946 that Bucky Harris would manage the 1947 New York Yankees was almost a foregone conclusion. “The announcement scarcely bowled over anyone with surprise,” one newspaper commented.[fn]Drebinger, John, “Harris Signs Two-Year Contract to Manage Yankees for $35,000 Annually,” New York Times, November 6, 1946.[/fn] Still, the circumstances that led to the hiring were anything but mundane.

The process began early in the 1946 season. That season was a managerial turnstile for the Yankees’ second-year co-owner, Larry MacPhail (who was also the team’s president and general manager). Joe McCarthy, who had been the manager since 1931, abruptly left in May after thirty-five games. He was succeeded on May 24 by fan favorite Bill Dickey, whose “managerial contract,” the club said, “would run through 1947.”[fn]McGowen, Roscoe, “Yanks Sign Harris as M’Phail Aide,” New York Times, September 10, 1946.[/fn] Dickey managed the team for 105 games and quit on September 12. Later it was disclosed that Dickey had never signed a contract, a detail that paved the way for his quick exit with fourteen games left in the season.

Dickey’s departure and the hiring of Harris had to do with both on-and off-field issues. In 1946 hundreds of baseball players were returning from World War II. Evaluating new players and re-evaluating veterans took tremendous time and energy. This placed a huge burden on Major League teams’ front-office and scouting staffs. Scouting was less highly developed then, with nothing like the complex, computer-driven systems of the modern baseball era. With the sudden influx of veterans, teams were pressured to assess large numbers of players in a very short time.

On the field the Yankees languished in second or third place for most of the 1946 season. The impulsive and outspoken MacPhail was strident in his demands that the Yankees finish no lower than second place. Predictably, Dickey and MacPhail had several rough patches during the season. Dickey threatened to quit at least four times, only to be dissuaded by MacPhail.

Then, in a surprise press conference on September 9, MacPhail introduced Stanley Raymond “Bucky” Harris as an executive hired without a title and with a vague job description. MacPhail commented to Roscoe McGowen of the New York Times that he and the Yankees’ farm director, George Weiss, were stretched to the limit because of the scouting burden. “Bucky will be the contact between myself and the club, doing a job that I have found neither myself or George Weiss has had time for this year.”[fn]Ibid.[/fn]

Harris was a long-time player and manager. He made his managerial debut in 1924 when the Washington Senators added field management to their second baseman’s responsibilities at the astonishingly young age of twenty-seven. The Senators won the pennant and World Series in Harris’s first year, earning him the sobriquet “Boy Wonder.” In 1946 Harris, after twenty years managing several teams, was the general manager of the Buffalo Bisons in the International League, a farm club of the Detroit Tigers. MacPhail had not met Harris until a couple of months before he hired him. Ed Barrow, who had preceded MacPhail as the Yankees’ general manager, and Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, convinced MacPhail that Harris would fill a hole in the Yankees organization. “’There’s not a sharper, shrewder appraiser of young talent in the majors than Stanley Harris,” Barrow said.[fn]Kritzer, Cy, “Harris Managed ‘For Last Time’ with Bisons,” The Sporting News, November 13, 1946.[/fn]

When he introduced Harris, at the September 9 press conference, MacPhail said he would be an executive aide hired to help in the evaluation of talent and to bolster scouting. MacPhail’s first directive to Harris: “Join the Yankees, follow them around the circuit. I want you to get acquainted with the American League again.”[fn]Ibid.[/fn] Harris himself said he had no desire to return to managing, that his assignment was to be solely administrative.

Near the end of the press conference a sportswriter asked MacPhail who would manage the Yankees in 1947. MacPhail replied, “That hasn’t been decided. I haven’t given it any thought.”[fn]McGowen, op. cit. [/fn] When Dickey was informed of MacPhail’s statement, he immediately went to the Yankees’ executive offices on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He confronted MacPhail and asked for a clarification of the president’s remark, apparently to no avail. Then, early on the morning of September 12, while the Yankees were in Detroit, Dickey telephoned MacPhail and took himself out of managerial consideration for 1947.

The timing of Dickey’s announcement apparently astonished MacPhail.[fn]Drebinger, John, “Yanks Not Ready To Name New Pilot,” New York Times. September 13, 1946.[/fn] He had assumed Dickey would finish out the year. For Dickey to call him from the road, on the eve of an important series with Detroit, whom the Yankees were battling for second place, was more than MacPhail could take. The next day Dickey was gone and Johnny Neun was named interim manager.[fn]“Johnny Neun Installed as Yankee Pilot.” Washington Post, September 14 1946.[/fn] The speculation that Bucky Harris would be the 1947 manager was now growing, even though both MacPhail and Harris continued to assert that Harris’s role with the Yankees would remain off the field.

Behind the scenes, though, MacPhail began to press Harris to be the manager for 1947. But the Yankees boss was also considering another candidate, Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher. When MacPhail was the general manager of the Dodgers before leaving to serve in World War II, Durocher was his manager, and the two had great respect for each other. MacPhail was also not fond of Branch Rickey, who had succeeded him at the helm of the Dodgers.

MacPhail and Durocher met in mid-November, but the facts are somewhat cloudy as to what took place. Durocher told the Washington Post, “About a month before the season ended Larry MacPhail asked to see me. I went over and he offered me the Yankee job. I told him I had a verbal agreement with Mr. Rickey and couldn’t take it. That was the last I heard of it.”[fn]“Lippy Tells of Yanks Offer.” Washington Post, November 17, 1946.[/fn]

MacPhail denied he had offered the job to Durocher. According to MacPhail, Durocher had sought out Yankees part-owner Dan Topping in early August and expressed interest in the manager’s job. Then, in October, Harris, after scouting Brooklyn’s playoff series with the Cardinals, recommended Durocher for the job. MacPhail took Harris’s recommendation “under advisement,” but five days later, on October 8, told the Yankee board of directors he was recommending that Harris be hired.[fn]Hand, Jack (Associated Press). “Yanks Claim Assist on Leo’s Deal.” Printed in Washington Post, November 27, 1946.[/fn]

The story then turns a little strange. Apparently Harris and MacPhail had agreed to terms on October 21 for Harris to manage the 1947 Yankees. Two days later, on the 23rd, Harris and Dodgers coach Chuck Dressen signed contracts and MacPhail called Durocher to inform him of the decision. MacPhail told the New York Times that Durocher had said he would “consider it a favor” if MacPhail could hold the announcement for a few days, to give Durocher some leverage in his negotiations with Branch Rickey over a new contract. MacPhail agreed, but called Durocher again on October 26 and told him that he “could not wait any longer.”[fn]Ibid.[/fn] Durocher and MacPhail subsequently agreed to a date of November 5 for the announcement.

(Based on the previous history of their relationship, MacPhail appeared to be tweaking Rickey and the Dodgers by insinuating that he withheld the Harris announcement in order to give Durocher leverage in his negotiations with Rickey and the Dodgers.) 

Durocher said he was “surprised when Dressen signed with MacPhail and hasn’t heard from Dressen since.”[fn]“Lippy Tells of Yank Offer,” Washington Post, November 17, 1946.[/fn] Jack Hand, an Associated Press sportswriter, commented, “this situation, following on the heels of Dressen’s ‘jumping’ the Dodgers, could be the foundation of an honest-to-goodness feud.[fn]Because he was still under contract to the Dodgers when he signed with the Yankees, Dressen was fined and suspended for thirty days.[/fn] However, it should be noted that the two teams jointly announced three exhibition dates in Havana and another three to be played at Ebbets Field.”[fn]Hand, op. cit.[/fn]

Sportswriters for the most part lauded MacPhail’s choice of Harris, but many criticized MacPhail’s seemingly impulsive, haphazard decision-making process. New York Times columnist Arthur Daley called Harris “an eminently sound choice,” and said he would take no “nonsense” from MacPhail “if that impulsive character ever should try to stick his finger in the pie.”[fn]Daley, Arthur, “Harris is Elected,” New York Times, November 6, 1946.[/fn]

There was one more twist to the saga of Harris’s hiring: At the winter baseball meetings in California, even though Harris had already signed with the Yankees, the Tigers offered him their general manager position, which they termed “the job of a lifetime.” Yet one has to question why the Tigers didn’t go after Harris earlier, when he was leaving Buffalo and not yet hired by the Yankees, especially since the Bisons were a Detroit affiliate. Harris nevertheless was forced to re-emphasize to the press his commitment to the Yankees. MacPhail also jumped in to allay any rumors, telling the press that the job had been offered to Harris and he spent some period of time considering it, but ultimately rejected it.[fn]Dawson, James P., “Harris Will Stay with Yanks Despite Tigers’ Offer of General Management,” New York Times, December 11, 1946.[/fn]

Harris’s final determining factor in accepting the job as Yankees manager may have been money. It was speculated in the press that when Harris was hired as a special assistant to MacPhail his salary was put at $20,000, and when he was made the manager it was raised to $35,000. Others also mused that once a talent like Harris was bitten by the managerial bug the wound ran deep and a return to the position was inevitable. One sentiment everyone could agree on when it was obvious that the Yankees had something special happening in 1947: “Well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”[fn]Drebinger, John, “Sometimes the Nice Guys’ Also Win.’” New York Times, July 20, 1947.[/fn]

ART SPANJER is a retired professor of library and information sciences. He likes to keep busy doing freelance writing, resaerch, and tending to his small ranch in the hill country of Texas. The absolute loves of his life, other than his lovely wife, Lisa, are Major League Baseball and the pursuit of learning.

The Yankees weren’t looking for a new home so much as they were looking for a return to the top of the standings. The Yanks had only missed one pennant from 1936 through 1943, and in six of those seven seasons they’d won the World Series. But in 1944, 1945, and 1946, they’d come in third, fourth, and third again.

The ’47 Yankees had a new manager in Bucky Harris. Joe McCarthy’s remarkable run of fifteen-plus seasons at the helm had ended on May 23, 1946. Bill Dickey and Johnny Neun had skippered the team through the balance of the season, but Harris was in place at the start of spring training. His coaching staff consisted of Johnny Schulte, returning for his fourteenth season, and the newly-hired former Brooklyn Dodgers, Red Corriden and Chuck Dressen. To round out his staff, Frankie Crosetti, a Yankee since 1932, would serve for the first time as a player-coach.

The team faced a number of decisions at the start of training, with only four positions locked in place: shortstop (Phil Rizzuto), left field (Charlie Keller), right field (Tommy Henrich)and center field (Johnny Lindell, because Joe DiMaggio was out with a heel injury).

Harris had 20-game winner Spud Chandler, Bill Bevens, and Joe Page returning for another season, along with Allie Reynolds, acquired in a trade with the Indians. Rookies Spec Shea and Don Johnson were poised to challenge for places in the stating rotation.

Aaron Robinson figured to retain his role as the first-string catcher, with Yogi Berra, Ralph Houk, Charlie Silvera, Gus Niarhos, and Sherman Lollar competing for the backup position.

Veteran first baseman George McQuinn had been released by the Athletics in January and signed by the Yankees. He took over for Nick Etten, whom the Yanks would sell to the Philadelphia Phillies the day before Opening Day.

Joe Gordon had been traded to the Indians for Reynolds, so second base again belonged to Snuffy Stirnweiss, who’d played the position in 1944 and 1945.

With the shift of Stirnweiss to second base, the competition for the third-base job was the most active one of the exhibition season. Rookie Bobby Brown and veteran Billy Johnson were pitted against each other for the position. Johnson got the nod from Bucky Harris just before the season opener.

Fifteen-year veteran Joe “Ducky” Medwick was released by the Brooklyn Dodgers in October, 1946 and signed by the Yankees later that December. Although he had an impressive spring, making the final roster cut, Medwick would never play a game with the Yankees and would finish his last two seasons of his phenomenal career with the St. Louis Cardinals.

In July 1946, Yankees president Larry MacPhail had announced his team would begin spring training in San Juan, Puerto Rico, starting on February 15. There were thirty-three players in the “Caribbean contingent,” although some rookies and invitees were left behind to work out under Crosetti in St. Petersburg. It wasn’t the first time the team had spent part of spring training outside the United States; in 1946, they’d spent a few days in Panama. The visit to Puerto Rico was sponsored by the Don Q distilleries.

The team flew the 1,600 miles from LaGuardia Airport in New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico in a chartered Constellation, arriving on Valentine’s Day. The first day of workouts saw a frustrated Harris threaten to leave the island, after a reported 3,000 Puerto Rican youngsters swarmed in the outer reaches of the outfield and made off with as many as five dozen balls hit out there. He didn’t blame the kids for acting like kids, but decried the lack of police protection.

After a week’s preparation, the Bronx Bombers played their first game on February 22 against the San Juan Senators, beating them handily, 16-3. The next day they took on Caguas in a 10:30 AM Sunday game and beat them, 6-5. Caguas was a team which the New York Times said was composed entirely of “Negro stars.” The third team to challenge the Yankees was Ponce, who bombarded the visitors, 12–8. The Yanks lost again the next day, the 25th, this time in twelve innings to a team of Puerto Rican All-Stars, 7–6. The biggest news of the day was that Joe DiMaggio, who’d been hobbling around on crutches following a bone spur operation on his heel, had to return to New York for further treatment. He missed all of spring training.

There was one more game in Puerto Rico, and the Yankees prevailed over the All-Stars, 8–6, thanks to a four-run outburst in the top of the ninth. The game scheduled for the 27th was rained out.

After flying to Caracas, Venezuela, the Yankees played on March 1 against the Vargas club and lost, 4–3, when Vargas scored twice in the bottom of the ninth. The major story of the day, however, was the jailing of two Vargas pitchers for refusing to pitch in the game. The two, Ed Chandler and George Brown, said they were under contract to Brooklyn and that Branch Rickey had ordered them not to play. The Yanks then ran off back-to-back wins. Ralph Houk’s ninth-inning hit broke a 4–4 tie against the Magallanes team, and on March 3 they defeated the Caracas All-Stars, 9–2.

There followed three games, all in Caracas, against the Brooklyn Dodgers and all played under lights. Some 10,000 spectators saw the Yankees win the first game, 17–6, and then fall, 8–7. The deciding game of the “Venezuelan Cup” went to the Yankees, 4–0. Both teams flew to Havana; for the Dodgers it was a return to their spring training home park at Gran Estadio de la Habana.

Three Brooklyn pitchers combined to no-hit the Yankees for nine innings, yielding one in the top of the tenth. The Dodgers got two of their five hits in the bottom of the tenth and won, 1–0. Four in the fourth gave the Yankees all they needed for a 4–1 win on March 9. When the Dodgers boarded a plane for the Panama Canal Zone on the 10th, MacPhail blasted them for walking out on the third game (which had indeed been listed in all the printed schedules and the program for the three days). The Yanks instead took on a team of Cuban All-Stars, and lost, 2–1.

Local teams from Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Cuba had each won a game or two from the visitors, but the Yankees held an 8-6 edge in games played to this point. On March 12, the traveling team reunited with those under Crosetti’s charge in St. Petersburg and the brand-new Al Lang Field was opened with a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Yankees had played fourteen games on their Caribbean tour, with an 8-6 record (3-2 versus Brooklyn and 5-4 against various Caribbean clubs).

In Grapefruit League action, New York played against the reigning world champion Cardinals, the reigning American League champion Boston Red Sox, and the Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, and Philadelphia Phillies. They dropped the first four games, but finished the spring season 9-9 against those five teams.

Before breaking camp, DiMaggio had a full workout on April 3 for the first time all spring and gave his teammates a show from the batting cage. On Spud Chandler’s first pitch, Joe whacked a towering shot, albeit foul. Because of his heel injury, DiMaggio would miss the first three regular season games before his first appearance, pinch hitting on April 19.

In early April, the Yankees beat the Class Double-A Atlanta Crackers in two games at Atlanta, and then beat the Class B Norfolk Tars in Virginia. In the first game at Atlanta, Yogi Berra was 5-for-6 with four runs scored and five RBIs in the 14–1 drubbing of the Crackers. In the April 7 contest at Norfolk, he was 3-for-6, with six runs batted in. His 450-foot home run over the center-field wall, gave him three round-trippers in two days. If there had been an award given to the top rookie in spring camp, Yogi would have won it hands down.

The next day, New York beat the Class Triple-A Orioles in Baltimore, 7–3, before ending with three games against the Dodgers, all at Ebbets Field, where they lost the first one and won the next two. In thirty-nine spring games, it was reported that the Yankees attendance was 265,130, an average of almost 6,800 per contest. Overall, the team came out of spring training in good shape to start the regular season.

“For what?”

Such was Leo Durocher’s first response to the news on April 9, 1947, that Commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler had suspended him from baseball for the 1947 season.[fn]Durocher, Leo with Ed Linn, Nice Guys Finish Last. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. p. 257.[/fn] The response was uncharacteristically short for The Lip, known throughout baseball for his verbal barbs. However, Commissioner Chandler had, upon pain of further suspension, requested silence from all parties involved in a series of clashes between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Chandler had fined both teams, fined a Dodgers assistant for the column he ghost-wrote for a Brooklyn paper in Durocher’s name, and had suspended Chuck Dressen, a Yankees coach, for thirty days. Leo’s suspension certainly appeared out of proportion.

The facts seem clear enough. The year-long suspension resulted from several years of Durocher’s riotous behavior. Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey once said that Durocher “possessed an infinite capacity for immediately making a bad thing worse.”[fn]Quoted in Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 22.[/fn] As first a player then a manager, Durocher had built a reputation as a big-spending, womanizing loudmouth. Routinely overextending his finances, Durocher maintained his job security with his slick fielding and fiery competitiveness. He often survived through timely and repeated interventions by his superiors. The pattern started during his playing days with the Yankees, and continued during his stints with the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals. Before the 1938 season, Durocher moved to Brooklyn, where he joined Larry MacPhail, the team’s mercurial president (and former Rickey protégé). MacPhail named him manager before the 1939 season; nevertheless, Leo’s lively gambling ways continued. This taste for the fast lane came at a cost. By 1944 Durocher had burned through two marriages, both of which had flashed brightly at first but then languished for years.

Commissioner Kenesaw Landis had warned Leo about the damage his gambling friends could do, but Landis died in November 1944 and been replaced by Chandler. In October 1946 New York papers started associating Durocher again with a minor Hollywood actor, George Raft, who knew mobsters like Lucky Luciano and Owney Madden. Nationally syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler led the charge with three columns indicting Durocher for his fast life and criminal associations. At Rickey’s request, Chandler summoned Durocher to discuss the matter, and Durocher duly apologized. Then, embodying Rickey’s statement that he could make any situation worse, Leo proceeded to tell the commissioner about his burgeoning love affair with actress Laraine Day, who was still married. The news stunned Chandler, but he did not threaten Durocher with suspension. The Brooklyn Catholic Youth Organization, though, had seen enough, and on March 1 withdrew its members from the Dodgers Knothole Gang.[fn]Mann, Arthur, Baseball Confidential: Secret History of the War Among Chandler, Durocher, MacPhail, and Rickey. New York: David McKay Company, 1951. pp. 43-47; Harold Parrott, The Lords of Baseball 2nd edition. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 2001. p. 252. Lowenfish, Lee. Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. p. 424.[/fn]

The events that actually caused Leo’s suspension came a week later. The Yankees, then owned partially by MacPhail, and the Dodgers were scheduled to play two spring-training games in Havana, Cuba. Just days before, Durocher had published a diatribe needling MacPhail (ghost-written by Dodgers staffer Harold Parrott) in the Brooklyn Eagle. On March 8 Durocher spotted nightclub owner Connie Immerman and racing handicapper Memphis Engelberg sitting near MacPhail. Both men counted among those Landis and Chandler had warned Durocher to avoid. Rickey publicly echoed Leo’s belief that a double standard existed: “one for Durocher and another for MacPhail.”[fn]Daley, Arthur, “The Lip Talked Too Much,” New York Times, April 11, 1947, p. 21; Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 247-8.[/fn] The Yankees owner then declared that Rickey and Durocher had libeled him, and demanded that Chandler act.

Over the last two weeks of March Chandler organized two meetings: The first, on March 24 in Sarasota, Florida, featured all those involved—Durocher, Dressen, MacPhail, Rickey, his assistant Arthur Mann, and the Dodgers’ legal representative, Walter O’Malley. A second meeting, four days later in St. Petersburg, included MacPhail, Yankees assistant Arthur Patterson, Rickey, Mann, and O’Malley.

Chandler ran the proceedings, asking most of the questions. Durocher noted the “trial” bore little resemblance to constitutional freedoms. Patterson noticeably dodged Chandler’s question about the source of Engelberg and Immerman’s tickets. After the second meeting, Chandler casually asked Rickey, “How much would it hurt you folks to have your fellow out of baseball?” Rickey was astonished, but still thought the commissioner was bluffing. The Dodgers expected that Leo might receive a minor fine and perhaps a short suspension. The year-long suspension left them flabbergasted.[fn]Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: 425; Mann, Baseball Confidential: 100-21 (quoted 113). Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 252-6.[/fn]

Two figures provide the connections between the Yankees and Durocher’s suspension: Charlie Dressen and Larry MacPhail. Both shared relationships and character traits with Durocher. In 1982 Red Barber wrote, “Try to untangle Durocher from either Rickey or MacPhail and it’s no story.”[fn]Barber, Red, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball. New York: Da Capo, 1982. p. 19. See also Eskenazi, Gerald, The Lip: A Biography of Leo Durocher. New York: William Morrow, 1993. pp. 199-200.[/fn] Barber could easily have added Dressen to the tangle of clashing personalities and jealousies. Like Durocher, Dressen was a diminutive, working-class Catholic. Both Dressen and Durocher enjoyed sporting pastimes like cards—especially bridge—and betting on horses. Consequently, both tended to manage their baseball teams with a healthy dose of hunch-playing and intuition. Finally, Dressen and Durocher knew each other quite well professionally. The two played together for two seasons in Cincinnati (1930 and 1931). They reunited in Brooklyn in 1939 when Durocher, in one of his first acts as Dodgers manager, named Dressen as one of his assistants.[fn]See Kahn, Roger, The Boys of Summer. New York: Perennial Classics, 2000. pp. 110-12 for Dressen’s background. Tygiel, Jules, Past Time: Baseball as History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.p. 163, for Dressen and Durocher’s shared managerial style.[/fn]

Nonetheless, Dressen initiated Yankee involvement in what would become Leo’s suspended season. In September 1946 he gave Rickey a verbal commitment to return to the Dodgers for the next season. Two months later he and another Dodgers coach, Red Corriden, joined the Yankees as coaches for new manager Bucky Harris. Rickey and Dressen did not get along well, largely because of Dressen’s gambling. Rickey even briefly fired Dressen as punishment in 1943, only to rehire him a few months later. Dressen tired of such lessons, and rejoined MacPhail. Dressen’s culpability led to his own thirty-day suspension.

But it was MacPhail who played a direct and, in the eyes of Brooklyn fans, malicious role in securing Durocher’s year-long suspension. MacPhail matched Durocher’s panache and dramatic flair. He was “the swashbuckling marauder, dressed to the nines in expensive but garishly loud suits . . . who thought his day was not complete unless he had done something worthy of mention in the press.” MacPhail had characteristically alienated three managers (Joe McCarthy, Bill Dickey, and Johnny Neun) in the 1946 season, so he needed a replacement. Rumors simmered that he even had approached Durocher during the season. In November he finally persuaded Bucky Harris, the former Washington Senators, Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, and Philadelphia Phillies field boss, to take control.[fn]Warfield, Don, The Roaring Redhead: Larry MacPhail, Baseball’s Great Innovator. South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, 1987.p. 68 (quoted), 180-81 (Harris), 169-70 (Chandler).[/fn]

MacPhail’s blustery entrepeneurship—familiar to fans of all the teams he’d owned—set the stage. Contacting Durocher midseason would have constituted tampering, a suspension-meriting offense. Brooklyn fans were certainly accustomed to Durocher-MacPhail spats, but these were almost always patched up within a day. Now MacPhail had gone too far. Public protests by the Yankees owner himself that he had not intended Leo’s suspension did not help. Making things worse was the widespread belief that Chandler owed MacPhail a favor for winning him the commissionership.[fn]Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 259, 263.[/fn]

Consequently, Chandler’s own position in the Durocher maelstrom underwent intense scrutiny. A Brooklyn policeman mused that Chandler must have possessed special testimonial evidence, otherwise “how could he do such a thing?” A Brooklyn bartender exemplified the extent of the borough’s sense of injury: “We had bad teams until Durocher came along. Lippy put Brooklyn on the map all over the world and that’s no way to treat a man who does that.”[fn]Both quoted in Murray Schumach, “Tempers flare from Greenpoint to Canarsie by Ban on Durocher,” New York Times, April 10, 1947: 31.[/fn] New York Times columnist Arthur Daley argued that Chandler had reprimanded the wrong man. “The entire business was so childish as to be ridiculous. The unhappy Happy should have spanked them all and sent Rickey and MacPhail packing off to bed without their suppers.”[fn]Daley, Arthur, “Chandler Flexes His Muscles,” New York Times, April 10, 1947.[/fn]

Chandler had misgauged the combative atmosphere of New York’s sports and media culture. Pegler’s 1946 columns certainly stirred up controversy. Pegler had earned his muckraking credentials legitimately. He won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering shady union practices, and in 1951 he was the first to name Bill “Mr. Big” McCormack as the crime boss controlling New Jersey’s shipping ports.[fn]Fisher, James T., On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2010. p. 174.[/fn] Nevertheless, within New York’s fevered sports and media climate, Pegler was but one, albeit widely read, voice. Years later, Durocher himself said “If a man dropped down from Mars and read nothing except Pegler’s columns for a month, he couldn’t help but believe the two great enemies of the Republic were Eleanor Roosevelt and Frank Sinatra.”[fn]Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 242.[/fn] From Chandler’s perspective, though, Pegler’s work ignited the notion to remove Durocher.

Likewise, Chandler’s claimed communication with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy seems unfounded. During the two late March “trial” days, Chandler mentioned that “a big man” in Washington had read Pegler’s columns and then wrote to demand Durocher’s lifelong suspension. This turned out to be Murphy.[fn]Mann, Baseball Confidential: 114; Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 262.[/fn] Two Brooklyn Catholic priests, Vincent J. Powell and Edward Lodge Curran, had spearheaded the Brooklyn CYO’s opposition to Durocher, so Murphy’s call for suspension did not portend well for Leo. Harold Parrott went so far as to blame Walter O’Malley, whose connections among Brooklyn’s Catholics could have stopped the witch hunt.[fn]Parrott, The Lords of Baseball: 253-54.[/fn]

However, the Catholic conspiracy theme seems dubious. Murphy’s most meticulous biographer does not focus on sports at all, even on an explosive character like Durocher.[fn]Fine, Sidney, Frank Murphy 3 vols., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975, 1979, 1984.[/fn] Furthermore, attempts to see collusion between Murphy and the Brooklyn diocese overlook Murphy’s own ambivalence towards his church’s clergy. While certainly devout, Murphy also exhibited an independent streak counter to the then-stereotypical “pray, pay, obey” image of Roman Catholics.[fn]Fine, Frank Murphy: The Washington Years, 1984: 10-12, 199-200.[/fn] Furthermore, presuming that Murphy did in fact contact Chandler, connecting the judge to Pegler in anything other than timing lacks evidence. Pegler and Murphy might have indeed both condemned Durocher’s behavior, but only Chandler melded their separate concerns into a singular moral argument. For his own part, Durocher claimed that Murphy soon distanced himself from Chandler’s claim.[fn]Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last: 261-62. The only evidence Chandler actually possessed correspondence from Murphy himself appears in William Marshall’s Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945-1951, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999. p. 453, note 65.[/fn]

Almost immediately after the news of Durocher’s suspension broke, Red Smith of the New York Herald-Tribune wrote:

As baseball commissioner charged with administration of the national game, Chandler works for the people, the millions of baseball fans in the land. He does not, whatever his decisions may suggest and whatever his own opinion in the matter may be, work for Larry MacPhail.”[fn]Smith, Red, “Open a Window, Albert,” in Red Smith on Baseball. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. p. 33.[/fn]

Chandler’s demand for absolute silence from the event’s participants provided the stigmatization necessary to fuel conspiratorial thinking. In Smith’s column the MacPhail-Chandler relationship provided the real reason for Durocher’s suspension, not Chandler’s official conclusions. Chandler refusal to publicize his evidence indicated fear and possibly even guilt, argued Smith. Baseball fans deserved better, he said. “They have a right to study the evidence which convinced Chandler that Durocher was guilty and MacPhail innocent of conduct detrimental to baseball. The Brooklyn club, as defendant in the case, has a right to have that evidence made public.”[fn]Ibid., 34.[/fn]

Arthur Daley agreed: “If the Flatbush Faithful mutter bitterly today ‘We wuz robbed,’ their grief is understandable.”[fn]Daley, Arthur, “Chandler Flexes His Muscles,” New York Times, April 10, 1947.[/fn] Some Brooklyn fans even burned Chandler in effigy.

The sentiment did not die quickly. In late April, before celebrating Babe Ruth Day, Chandler had to stare down an initially hostile crowd at Yankee Stadium. Sportswriters in other Major League cities, while not Durocher fans, argued that the punishment was went too far.[fn]Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945-1951: 115 (effigy and sportswriters), 116 (Yankee Stadium)[/fn] Fifteen years after the suspension, columnists still accepted Chandler’s guilt in the matter. Writing from Los Angeles, Jim Murray reminisced that Durocher got set down one whole year just for standing next to a gambler. Baseball paid him off on the q.t. because the action was as illegal as lynching and everyone knew it but the commissioner, Happy Chandler, who had read one too many chapters of the life of Judge Landis.[fn]Murray, Jim, “Whose Deal?” Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1964, 1, 7.[/fn]

However, other interpretations have detected conspiracy behind Durocher’s suspension from the increasingly bitter relationship between Rickey and MacPhail. Peter Golenbock dates the conflict to spring training 1939 when Durocher started Pete Reiser, then a Minor Leaguer whom MacPhail had agreed to “hide” as a favor for Rickey (an offense worthy of suspension itself), when Rickey was still running the Cardinals. Rickey accused MacPhail of reneging on their secret deal and, in 1942, felt MacPhail had ruined Reiser’s once-promising career.[fn]Golenbock, Peter. Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers. New York: Contemporary Books, 2000. pp. 25-26, 55-61.[/fn]

Geography and demographics also contributed to conspiratorial thinking behind Durocher’s suspension. Within New York’s five boroughs, Brooklyn stood as rough-hewn also-ran. A strident anti-triumphalism thus quickly emerged among the borough and its team’s fans. In 1947 MacPhail, who had created Durocher’s pennant-winner in 1941, now stood victorious on the other side. Along the way he had swiped away Dressen. Durocher’s suspension seemed the pinnacle of MacPhail’s perfidies—all committed with the hated crosstown rival Yankees. Rickey was so distraught by the loss that, when confronted by a jubilant MacPhail after Game Seven, he broke all ties, severing a professional relationship that dated to 1930. MacPhail then went famously on a drunken binge wherein he retired from baseball, fired Yankees executive George Weiss, and scuffled with his fellow team owners.[fn]Kahn, Roger, The Era 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. pp. 141-43.[/fn]

Forty years later Durocher still harbored animosity, refusing even to speak Chandler’s name when interviewed. Durocher indicated that while he maintained his silence publicly, he repeatedly chewed off Chandler’s ears over the telephone. In Leo’s view his suspension’s cause, if it had any at all, rested solely with the commissioner.[fn]Vecsey, George, “Sports of The Times; The Lion Roars A Little.” New York Times, May 24, 1987. Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last, pp. 263-68.[/fn]

As Leo himself said of MacPhail, “He did things, and when you do things, other things, unexpected things, are always happening around you.”[fn]Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last, 119.[/fn] Something was bound to happen, and it did. But Durocher and MacPhail had accepted each other’s apologies in the March 24, 1947, meeting, so in their minds the matter was settled. The unexpected thing, Leo’s suspension, came from Chandler, whose appointment MacPhail orchestrated.

Most figures involved suspected Durocher would return to baseball, which he certainly did. Harold Parrott asserted that the manager “led a charmed life, walking the tightrope across problems with women, money, umpires, and Unhappy Chandler.”[fn]Parrott, The Lords of Baseball, 196.[/fn]

JEFFREY MARLETT teaches religious studies at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. He is the author of “Saving the Heartland: Catholic Missionaries in Rural America, 1920-1960” (Northern Illinois University Press, 2002). He became interested in Leo Durocher while preparing undergraduate ethics courses.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Freddy Berowski, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York; Joe Emmick, Patrick Hayes, and Lyle Spatz.

The 1947 season for the New York Yankees was expected to be another step down in the decline of the franchise. Joe DiMaggio and Joe Gordon had returned from the military in 1946, but both had subpar years. For the first time in his career, DiMaggio batted below .300 and failed to drive in 100 runs. Gordon, the league’s most Valuable Player in 1942, batted an anemic .210. Ace pitcher Spud Chandler was a 20-game winner in 1946, but he was now 38 years old. New York finished 17 games behind the Boston Red Sox, who were prohibitive favorites to repeat in 1947.

It never happened. In 1947 the Red Sox collapsed to a third-place finish, and the New York Yankees rode a midseason 19-game winning streak to capture the pennant by 12 games over Detroit, then beat Brooklyn in a tense seven-game World Series. After falling to third place in 1948, the Yankees went on to win an astounding five consecutive World Series championships from 1949 to 1953. Two pitchers emerged in that remarkable 1947 season who would lead the Yankees to this unprecedented success: Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi.

Doubtless few saw it coming after the 1946 season. In October, Yankees President Larry MacPhail traded Gordon to the Cleveland Indians for the under-achieving 29-year-old Reynolds, who was coming off a disappointing 11-15 season. Reynolds, who was part Creek Indian, had been dubbed “The Vanishing American” in Cleveland because of his inability to pitch complete games.

In an effort to solve the Yankees first-base problems, MacPhail signed 37-year-old free agent George McQuinn in January. McQuinn was coming off a year in which he hit .225 for the last-place Philadelphia Athletics, who released him at the end of the 1946 season. Eyes rolled at the thought of a Yankees first baseman arriving after being released by a last-place team.

Manager Bucky Harris set his 1947 starting rotation with Reynolds third, behind Chandler and right-hander Bill Bevens. The fourth starter was an inconsistent, hard-throwing left-hander who enjoyed the nightlife a little too much: Joe Page. Soon rookie Spec Shea moved into the fourth spot, and Page was exiled to the bullpen, and in Harris’s mind, as his patience ran out, would soon be pitching for the Class Triple-A Newark Bears.

When Boston came into Yankee Stadium on May 23 for a four-game series, New York seemed stuck at a mediocre 13-14. The Red Sox, at 17-12, were positioned to make a move on front-running Detroit, who, led by pitchers Hal Newhouser, Fred Hutchinson, and Dizzy Trout, had jumped out to a 17-8 record and the league lead.

In four Major League seasons with Cleveland, Reynolds never fulfilled the promise that management hoped for when they signed him off the Oklahoma A&M campus in 1939. His wife and two children afforded him an exemption from military service, and by 1942 Cleveland was looking for a replacement for their ace Bob Feller, who had enlisted soon after Pearl Harbor. In spite of stamina and control problems, Allie got the call to report to Cleveland for the end of the 1942 season. From then on, it was a roller coaster ride, resulting in a 51-47 record when the Indians finally gave up on him.[fn]Reynolds was eventually diagnosed with diabetes, and large doses of orange juice in 1947 solved his stamina problems.[/fn]

Soon after the 1947 season began, a new Reynolds emerged. In the first of the four-game weekend series, he shut out the Red Sox, 9–0, on two hits. It was the kind of “Big Game” performance that became the hallmark of Allie Reynolds in his New York Yankees incarnation. In the next three games, Chandler, Bevens, and Page handed Boston three more losses.

The Yankees had found their ace. Allie Reynolds became Harris’s stopper. He faced the best of the Boston and Detroit staffs for the rest of the season, led the Yankees in starts (30), complete games (17), and was the only starter with more than two hundred innings pitched (242). His record was 19-8 with an ERA of 3.20. He also showed Harris that he could work in between starts; Reynolds relieved four times and got the first two of his 41 saves as a Yankee.

Vic Raschi, 28 years old and languishing in the Pacific Coast League with the Portland Beavers in 1947, was ready to quit baseball. The Yankees had signed him in 1938 after the high-school star turned down a football scholarship to Ohio State. Farm director George Weiss had promised Raschi’s immigrant parents the club would pay for Vic’s college education; the new Yankees recruit enrolled at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the fall. After three seasons starring on the college baseball team, Raschi was ordered to report to the Amsterdam (New York) Rugmakers of the Class C Canadian-American League in 1941 after William and Mary’s season was complete.

His professional career was under way. After the 1942 season with the Norfolk (Virginia) Tars of the Class B Piedmont League, Raschi enlisted in the Army Air Force. For the next three years he moved all over the country as a physical-fitness trainer. He finally got back to Williamsburg in 1945 to marry his college sweetheart. When he was discharged, he was 27 years old, and time was running out. After a 1946 season with the Class A Binghamton (New York) Triplets and Newark in the International League, Raschi got a September call-up to the big club; he was ready. He had two starts against the last-place Athletics and won both, going the distance each time.

When Raschi reported to spring training in 1947, he thought he had won a roster spot on the basis of his late-season performance. But Harris had turned the responsibility for pitchers over to coach Charlie Dressen, an old-time National League infielder and later manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dressen thought he knew everything about pitchers and their make-up.[fn]Charlie Silvera, backup catcher to Berra during the great Yankees years, came up in 1949 and knew Dressen from the Pacific Coast League. His comment on Dressen as a pitching coach: “Dressen thought he knew everything about pitching, and he knew nothing. He would stop and tell the pitchers what they were doing wrong. He almost ruined Reynolds.” (Interview, August 19, 2004) Reynolds also had no use for Dressen: “Dressen would make himself look good by making you look bad.” (Phil Rizzuto and Tom Horton, The October Twelve, 168) Ralph Branca, who pitched for Brooklyn when Dressen managed there in 1951, referred to him as “that piece of dreck Dressen,” using a very unflattering Yiddish expression. Branca was not Jewish, but he found the right word. (Roger Kahn, The Era, 1947-1957, 107).[/fn] He used Raschi exclusively as a batting-practice pitcher during spring training, and before the season started, Vic was told to report to Portland of the Class Triple-A Pacific Coast League. The other two call-ups from Newark in September 1946, Yogi Berra and Bobby Brown, had made the team; Raschi, however, was going back to the minors.

Instead of reporting, a bitter and discouraged Raschi returned to his wife, Sally, in upstate New York to tell her he was finished. The Yankees called him twice, threatened to ban him for life unless he reported. Raschi had the personality make-up of a stubborn bulldog, and he was not fazed by threats. Sally Raschi, who understood her husband, brought a calm, deliberate resolution to the crisis: “I’ve never seen Portland, so let’s go.” It was the most important decision of their lives.

After settling into an apartment, Raschi went over to the stadium, found the manager’s office, knocked, entered, and saw a tall man walking toward him with an outstretched hand and a face he could trust. It was Jim Turner; this was to be a friendship for life. Turner, consummate mentor of pitchers, knew that this big, dour, hard-throwing pitcher had all the equipment: four-seam fastball, curve, slider, and change-up. Turner also noticed that at a critical moment, some .220 hitter would sit on Raschi’s fastball and beat him. Vic needed to pitch inside, push the batter off the plate, but his brother Gene lost his sight after being beaned, and Raschi had a fear of hitting someone in the head. Turner worked on him. He knew that eventually any Major League hitter would catch up with any fastball; there was only one way to guarantee that the pitcher owned the plate, not the hitter: through intimidation, and that meant pitching “up and in.”

It was through Turner’s tutelage in this period at Portland that Raschi developed a terrifying scowl, a withering look that opposing teams, journalists, and even teammates came to appreciate—and fear. When they saw “the look” on Raschi’s face, they stayed away. By the time Jim Turner was finished with his course of instruction, no one would come near Vic Raschi on the day that he pitched.[fn]Raschi’s “look” actually took the place of his pitching “up and in.” Of the three Yankee greats of those teams, Vic hit the fewest batsmen in his career, a total of twenty-six, far fewer than Allie Reynolds’ fifty-seven and even control pitcher Ed Lopat’s forty-three. Reynolds would terrify opposing hitters with a fastball under the chin; Raschi would terrify them with his “look.” Lopat would plunk any hitter who thought he was getting too smart for his own good. None of them approached the numbers of someone like Don Drysdale, who delighted in hitting 154 batters in his career.[/fn]

In July Turner called Weiss and told him to get Raschi back to the Yankees. Weiss, who knew Turner was one of the most astute evaluators of pitching talent, didn’t waste any time. The Yankees were in the middle of their extraordinary win streak, but were running out of arms. Weiss recalled Raschi on the same day in July that he acquired 39-year-old veteran Bobo Newsom.

The two newcomers pitched in tandem, winning doubleheaders in games 13 and 14 of the streak, and again in 18 and 19, the final two of the streak. When Raschi walked into the Yankees clubhouse on that July day, he knew most of the faces from his brief stint at the end of the ’46 season. But he looked for a new one in particular, Allie Reynolds, and a friendship was forged that lasted the rest of their lives.

Raschi started 15 games in that half-season of 1947, completed six and finished with a 7-2 record. Not even Charlie Dressen could stop his march to Yankees greatness. In his eight years with New York, his record was 120-50 for a win-loss percentage of .706, second only to Spud Chandler in Yankees history. After winning 19 games in 1948, Raschi won 21 games in each of the 1949, 1950, and 1951 seasons. In World Series competition he was 5-3; two of those losses were 1–0 and 3–2. His Series ERA is 2.24.

Like his friend Allie Reynolds, he would go on to become a big-game pitcher, winning the pennant clincher in the last game of the 1949 season and World Series final games in 1949 and 1951.

Neither Reynolds nor Raschi was the star of the 1947 World Series. That role was left to Joe Page. Reynolds went all the way in a second-game 10–3 victory for his only win. Raschi was used exclusively in relief, a role in which he never enjoyed success.

That season was prelude to one of the most unexpected runs in baseball history, and Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi were on center stage for those five years between 1949 and 1953.

The unforeseen Yankees’ success of 1947 did not change the opinion of baseball writers who were convinced that the season had been an aberration. That sentiment seemed to be confirmed in 1948 when the Red Sox apparently regained their equilibrium, only to be deposed in a one-game playoff by the upstart Cleveland Indians. One historian wrote: “The Yankees showed every sign of having crumbled before the start of the [1949] season. The Bombers had fallen to third place, age was slowing up several key pinstripers, and both Cleveland and Boston seemed stronger on paper than their 1948 contending squads.”[fn]David S. Neft and Richard M. Cohen, Baseball, The Sports Encyclopedia, 14th edition, 278.[/fn]

In February 1948 George Weiss, by then the general manager, traded his starting catcher, Aaron Robinson and two other players, for Chicago White Sox left-hander Ed Lopat. Weiss fired manager Bucky Harris, hired Casey Stengel, and Weiss and Stengel agreed the best potential pitching coach in baseball was the manager of the Portland Beavers, Jim Turner. They also knew much depended on turning Yogi Berra into a respectable catcher.[fn]At the start of the 1949 season, there was still uncertainty about Berra. The Opening Day catcher was Gus Niarhos, and Berra was on the bench.[/fn] That project was turned over to future Hall of Famer Bill Dickey and the three veteran pitchers who would lead the New York Yankees on to unprecedented glory: New York’s Big Three, a team within a team: Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, and Ed Lopat.

In addition to Raschi’s 120 victories, Reynolds was 131-60, with two no-hitters with the Yankees. In his eight years with New York, Ed Lopat produced a 113-59 record, a .657 winning percentage, and an ERA of 3.19. Collectively, they won 16 of the Yankees’ 20 World Series victories between 1949 and 1953. Either Allie or Vic was the winning pitcher or got the save in each of the final games of those five World Series. But, “In the Beginning” was the 1947 season that few saw coming.

SOL GITTLEMAN graduated from Drew University in 1955. After a promising college baseball career, he was shown the scouting report written by a part-time bird dog covering colleges in northern New Jersey: “Too small; can’t hit with power, weak arm, cheats on the infield.” This led him to graduate school at Columbia and the University of Michigan, where he received his PhD in comparative literature. He has been at Tufts University since 1964, serving as provost for twenty-one years. Gittleman currently serves as the Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor. His “Reynolds, Raschi, and Lopat: New York’s Big Three and the Great Yankee Dynasty of 1949-53” was published in 2007. He has been a SABR member since 1986.

Sources

Frommer, Harvey, New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age: 1947-1957. New York: Macmillan, 1980.

Gittleman, Sol, Reynolds, Raschi, and Lopat: New York’s Big Three and the Great Yankee Dynasty of 1949-1953. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2007.

Golenbock, Peter, Dynasty: The New York Yankees, 1949-1964. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975,

Halberstam, David, Summer of ’49. New York: William Morrow, 1989.

Kahn, Roger, The Era: 1947-1957. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1993.

Lanctot, Neil, Campy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011

Neft, David S., and Richard M. Cohen, Baseball, 14th edition, The Sports Encyclopedia Series. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.

Rizzuto, Phil, with Tom Horton, The October Twelve. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1994.

Spatz, Lyle, Yankees Coming, Yankees Going. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2000.

Author interviews with Charlie Silvera, August 19, 2004; Bobby Brown, June 21, 2004; Sally Raschi, June 27, 2004.

On the Yankees’ schedule that Sunday afternoon was a doubleheader in Griffith Stadium against the Washington Senators. The Yankees sent rookie Karl Drews to the mound against the Senators’ ace Early Wynn in the first game, and experience held to form. Wynn pitched like the 300-game winner he would become, allowing just one run on five hits. Drews pitched well in pursuit of what would have been just his third career victory, allowing one earned run in seven innings, but he could not overcome two unearned runs that resulted from a Snuffy Stirnweiss error. Washington won the game 5–1.

At the time the loss seemed unremarkable. It appeared to be just another step in the 154-game journey from spring to fall, unremarkable except that it would be the team’s last loss for nearly three weeks. The second game of the doubleheader began a streak that would not be snapped until the Yankees had set a team record and tied the 41-year-old American League mark for consecutive wins.

Game Two was a 3–1 win for the Yankees. Another rookie, Don Johnson, started for New York, but when he faltered in the sixth inning, Allie Reynolds, who had started in Philadelphia only three days earlier, came out of the bullpen to throw 3 2/3 scoreless innings.

From Washington the Yankees traveled to Boston for a single game, a 3–1 win that came on the strength of a first-inning two-run triple by Joe DiMaggio. Spec Shea tossed a complete-game, four-hitter, earning the rookie pitcher his tenth victory against only two defeats.

A six-game homestand followed in which the Yankees hosted the Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics. The New Yorkers swept Washington by scores of 8–1, 7–3, and 4–2. The last of those games was a tight one. New York trailed in the bottom of the seventh, but pinch-hitter Bobby Brown delivered a two-run, game-tying single, and an inning later the Yankees earned the win by scoring two runs on hits by DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto.

Completing the homestand, the Yankees swept the Athletics by scores of 5–1, 8–2, and 9–2, which brought New York to the All-Star break with a record of 47 wins and 26 losses and a lead of eight games over Detroit and Boston. It was at this point that the streak became newsworthy.[fn]Effrat, Louis, “Bombers’ Two Big Innings Conquer Athletics, 8-2, 9-2, Before 51,957,” New York Times, July 7, 1947.[/fn] With eight straight wins, the Yankees had tied Boston for the longest winning streak of the season.

Reynolds, Shea, and Spud Chandler were a strong threesome of starting pitchers for the Yankees during the first half of the 1947 season. Johnson and Bill Bevens rounded out the rotation, with others on the staff occasionally contributing starts. Shea, Chandler, and reliever Joe Page were among the Yankees honored with selection to the All-Star team, with Shea earning the victory over the National Leaguers and Page collecting the retroactive save.

After the All-Star break, the New Yorkers embarked on an extended road trip. In the days before any city west of St. Louis had secured a Major League franchise, the so-called Western swing took the Yankees to St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit.

The opener in St. Louis was a narrow New York victory. Chandler, who had made a habit of pitching complete games, produced an uncharacteristically weak outing, giving up ten hits in 6 1/3 innings. With the game tied, 3–3, Page came in and gave a doubly heroic performance. Not only did he complete the game by pitching 2 2/3 scoreless innings, but in the top of the ninth he blasted a Nelson Potter pitch over the right-center-field fence for the game-winning home run. As it turned out, Chandler was injured. The eleven-year veteran would not start another game until September and would not return to the Major Leagues after off-season elbow surgery.[fn]Drebinger, John, “’Fully Recovered’ Chandler Reports,” New York Times, January 21, 1948.[/fn]

The remaining three games in St. Louis were not as close. The Yankees won on a Reynolds six-hitter, 3–1, then swept a doubleheader by scores of 12–2 and 8–5. The offensive outbreak was well-timed, as the Yankees’ starting pitching struggled in both games of the twin bill. In the opener Shea could manage only one inning on the mound before withdrawing with arm stiffness. Butch Wensloff completed the game in relief. In the nightcap, Bevens “staggered through four innings” as sportswriter James Dawson put it, before being lifted for a pinch hitter.[fn]Dawson, James P., “Yankees Vanquish Browns by 12-2, 8-5,” New York Times, July 13, 1947.[/fn] Drews and Page pitched well out of the bullpen, earning the win and save, respectively.

The performance by Bevens continued a trend that had seen him lose eight of nine decisions since May 3. The thirty-year-old Bevens had been, by contrast, a solid starter for New York the previous two seasons. Despite serious concerns about three of their starting pitchers, the Yankees ended the day with a winning streak that stood at twelve games and with a 9 1/2-game lead.

A doubleheader in Chicago followed, and the Yankees sought to adjust to their starting pitching woes by sending two newly acquired hurlers to the hill. Bobo Newsom pitched the opener only two days after having been purchased from the Senators. One month shy of his fortieth birthday, the well-traveled veteran came through with a five-hit, complete game in the Yankees’ 10–3 win.

Vic Raschi, also with the team only two days since being recalled from Portland of the Pacific Coast League, started the nightcap. Raschi pitched six strong innings before fading in the seventh; Page and Reynolds finished the Yankees’ 6–4 win. Raschi’s solid starting effort foreshadowed the role he would play for the team for some years to come. The twenty-eight-year-old had very little Major League experience to that point, but he would continue as a high-performing starter for the balance of the season and remain an anchor of the New York rotation through the 1953 season.

New York’s hitting stars that Sunday in Chicago were Billy Johnson (five hits in the first game), Tommy Henrich (three hits in each game) and Rizzuto (four hits for the day, including a grand slam in the opener). The Yankees pitching staff got a welcome rest the next day when their contest in Chicago was rained out.

While the Yankees’ starting rotation was in a state of uncertainty, the position players Harris used were practically invariant. The infield starters for every game of the streak, and most games of the season, were George McQuinn at first base, Stirnweiss at second, Billy Johnson at third, and Rizzuto at shortstop. Similarly, Johnny Lindell, DiMaggio and Henrich were steady starters in the outfield, although Lindell’s opportunity came as a result of a back injury suffered by Charlie Keller earlier in the season.[fn]Effrat, Louis, “Shea and Yankees Stop Athletics, 5-1,” New York Times, July 6, 1947.[/fn] Only the catcher’s position changed regularly, as Berra and Aaron Robinson mostly shared the role, with an occasional start going to Ralph Houk.

With the Yankees having won fourteen in a row, the team record sixteen-game winning streak was in sight, as was the league record of nineteen.[fn]Dawson, James P., “Rain Halts Yanks at Comiskey Park,” New York Times, July 15, 1947.[/fn] The opportunity to break one and equal the other came in a three-day, five-game series in Cleveland.

Reynolds pitched the opener of the Tuesday twin bill, and was not at his best. He allowed four runs on ten hits, but he went the distance for the fourth time during the streak. The outcome of the game was in little doubt, as the Yankees put up nine runs, including solo homers by McQuinn and DiMaggio.

The second game was a low-scoring affair that the Yankees won late. Bevens returned to winning form by outdueling future Hall-of-Famer Bob Feller. The decisive run in the Yankees’ 2–1 win came in the top of the ninth when Billy Johnson’s two-out triple scored DiMaggio.

The team record of sixteen straight wins had been matched, a noteworthy accomplishment given the long shadow cast by the Yankees’ greats of the 1920s who had forged that record. Louis Effrat put the feat in perspective:

Maybe the Yankees of 1947 are not quite as great as the Yankees of 1926. Maybe the current edition does not quite measure up to the Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig and Pennock and Shawkey. This is hardly the time to weigh their respective merits. Suffice to report that the New Yorkers tonight matched that 1926 aggregation’s 16-game winning streak by defeating the Indians, 9–4 and 2–1, in a twilight-night double-header.

Nor can the men under Bucky Harris’ command be accused of picking a soft one for their sixteenth straight victim. Rather, it was against one of the all-time greats, Bob Feller, that the New Yorkers, in a dramatic finish, achieved their latest success.[fn]Effrat, Louis, “Bombers Trip Indians by 9-4, 2-1, with Reynolds and Bevens in Box,” New York Times, July 16, 1947.[/fn]

The middle game of the Cleveland series was an 8–2 New York win. The team’s first four batters produced hits, including a home run by Henrich, giving the Yankees a three-run lead before Cleveland could record an out. Wensloff pitched ably for five innings before relievers Drews and Page finished the game. With the win, Harris’s Yankees had set the team record for consecutive wins. Again, recognition in the press came with a mix of celebration of the current accomplishment and deference to the team’s history. John Drebinger wrote:

The Yankees of 1947 have just bettered the consecutive string of victories which those other Yanks of incredible deeds set a score of years ago. . . . However, when the Yanks of ’47 surpassed the mark of their illustrious predecessors, it at least proved that what has been done once can be improved upon regardless of the fact that the first breathless record was written by such immortals as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel and Tony Lazzeri.[fn]Drebinger, John, “’Fully Recovered’ Chandler Reports,” New York Times, January 21, 1948.[/fn]

The American League record winning streak was held by the “Hitless Wonders,” the 1906 Chicago White Sox who won the pennant and the World Series despite their .230 team batting average. A Yankees sweep of the July 17 doubleheader in Cleveland would equal the record. McQuinn was the hitting star in the opener with a home run in the fourth inning providing two runs toward the Yankees’ 3–1 victory. Newsom pitched the complete game, further proving his worth as a midseason acquisition. The victory was his second as a Yankee and the 200th of his career.

In the second game of the day, a barrage of singles in the early innings brought the Yankees a 5–0 lead. They cruised to the 7–2 victory behind Raschi’s six-hit pitching. The streak that began in Washington in late June had grown to equal the 1906 White Sox’ mark.

The Yankees’ lead in the pennant race had widened to 11 1/2 games. The second-place Tigers had played well since late June, and Detroit would be the setting for the New Yorkers’ chance to break the league-record winning streak. However, a winning streak could not have met a more decisive end than the one that befell the Yankees’ nineteen-game streak in the Motor City. Detroit starter Fred Hutchinson pitched one of the best games of his career, a two-hit, no walk, complete-game shutout. Meanwhile the bats of George Kell, Vic Wertz, Eddie Mayo, and company pounded Randy Gumpert and Karl Drews for eight runs on eighteen hits. The streak was over, but New York’s nineteen straight wins had all but ended the 1947 American League pennant race. The Yankees had stretched their slender late-June lead to an almost insurmountable mid-July margin. New York would not only remain in first place for the remainder of the season, but its lead would only briefly drop below ten games.

Team accomplishments emerge from individual contributions. The Yankees batted .292 as a team during the streak. Not surprisingly, DiMaggio led the attack, but he was not alone in providing offensive firepower. None of New York’s starters was slumping during the streak; only Lindell posted a batting average during the nineteen games that was substantially below his season and career marks.

The team ERA was a superb 2.00 for the streak, and no fewer than eleven pitchers earned victories, led by Reynolds with four complete-game wins and two critical relief outings. All Yankees pitchers outperformed their season and career ERA marks, except Chandler, who at 2.94 was only slightly above.

Viewed from the distance of more than six decades, the 1947 Yankees’ winning streak remains a monumental accomplishment. Of note, the streak was achieved mostly on the road and included six sweeps of doubleheaders. The American League record for consecutive wins would not fall until the Oakland Athletics won twenty straight in 2002, and meanwhile no team has approached the Major League mark of twenty-six straight set by the New York Giants in 1916. Nonetheless, any baseball team in any era would be thrilled to put together the kind of run that the Yankees did in June and July of 1947, when they combined consistent hitting, superb pitching, and timely roster moves to amass nineteen consecutive victories.

BRENDAN BINGHAM has been a SABR member since 2009 and is an occasional contributor to the website Baseball: Past and Present. Brendan currently works in the medical-device industry. During a twenty-five-year career as a research scientist, he has published original work in genetics, endocrinology, and neuroscience

The Yankees wasted no time getting to Taylor. The first two batters, Snuffy Stirnweiss and Tommy Henrich, singled, and Yogi Berra reached first on an error by shortstop Pee Wee Reese. A walk to Joe DiMaggio forced in a run and sent Taylor to an early shower. Hal Gregg assumed the pitching duties for Brooklyn and extinguished the rally on a pop-up and a double play grounder. In the home half of the first the Dodgers worked Bevens for two walks, but both runners were left stranded.

In the third, after DiMaggio walked, George McQuinn tapped a ball near the plate that catcher Bruce Edwards threw wildly to first. DiMaggio, on a sign from third base coach Chuck Dressen, tried to score on the errant throw but was cut down easily at the plate. Dressen’s decision to send DiMaggio home on the play provided the second-guessers with ample grist during the following few days.

In the bottom of the third the Dodgers’ Eddie Stanky led off with a walk and advanced to second on a Bevens wild pitch. But Johnny Lindell helped the Yankees escape damage with a tumbling catch of Jackie Robinson’s foul fly. New York added an insurance run in the fourth when Billy Johnson tripled and Lindell doubled him home. It was 2–0, Yankees.

The Dodgers finally took advantage of Bevens’s wildness in the fifth. The first two batters, Spider Jorgensen and Hal Gregg, walked. Although the Dodgers had yet to hit safely, they now had six free passes from the big right-hander. Stanky sacrificed both runners into scoring position. Pee Wee Reese then sent a ground ball to shortstop Phil Rizzuto, who tossed out Gregg running to third. But Jorgensen scored. It was now 2–1, Yankees.

Hank Behrman replaced Gregg on the mound for Brooklyn in the eighth. Behrman withstood an error by Jorgenson in that inning, but ran into serious trouble in the ninth. With Rizzuto on first, Bevens sacrificed, but both he and Rizzuto were safe when the throw to second was late. When Stirnweiss singled to center, the Yankees had the bases loaded and a golden opportunity to put the game out of reach.

Brooklyn called in its ace reliever, Hugh Casey, to face the always dangerous Henrich. On Casey’s first pitch, Henrich grounded sharply back to the hurler, who started a snappy pitcher-to-catcher-to-first double play, pulling the Dodgers out of potential disaster. They still had no hits but were only one run down entering the do-or-die bottom of the ninth.

Bevens’s high-wire act finally caught up with him in the strategy-filled, fatal ninth. After Bruce Edwards flied out, Carl Furillo collected the Dodgers’ ninth walk. When Jorgensen fouled out, Bevens was one out away from the first World Series no-hitter. Al Gionfriddo, running for Furillo, stole second. This changed the Yankees’ thinking about pitching to Pete Reiser, who was batting for Casey. Although the talented outfielder was injured and couldn’t run well, New York decided to walk him. It was the tenth walk for Brooklyn and a disaster-inviting strategy—putting the winning run on base. Eddie Miksis ran for Reiser.

The cat-and-mouse game reached another level when, for only the second time this season, right-hand-hitting Eddie Stanky was lifted for a pinch hitter. Cookie Lavagetto, who also batted from the right side, was an aging veteran who had seen limited action during the season. He swung at the first pitch and missed, leaving Bevens only two strikes away from victory and fame. But Lavagetto drilled the next offering off the right-field wall. The ball bounced around long enough for Gionfriddo to score the tying run and Miksis to tally the game-winner.

As his near fame turned into an unforgettable loss, Bevens’s locker-room quote never rang truer: “Those bases on balls sure kill you.” Bevens came back to pitch 2 2/3 scoreless relief innings in the Yankees’ triumphant Game Seven. That was the final game of his four-year Major League career. It was also the final game of Lavagetto’s career.

JOE DITTMAR, a corporate trainer in the pharmaceutical industry, has been a leader in the SABR Connie Mack Chapter and was vice chairman of the Records Committee for 18 years. In addition to numerous articles published in SABR’s “The National Pastime” and “Baseball Research Journal”, he has authored “Baseball’s Benchmark Boxscores,” “The 100 Greatest Baseball Games of the 20th Century Ranked,” and the Sporting-News/SABR Research Award-winning “Baseball Records Registry: The Best and Worst Single-Day Performances and the Stories Behind Them.” Joe also teaches a baseball history class at his local community college.