Baseball Personalities (Part 2)
Anyone who read Part One will no doubt think, “It’s about time!” Sorry for the two month delay. I’ve been busy trying to be colorful.
Not really. I’m 74 and being colorful is long gone. What I have been doing is trying to get the ball over the plate. I’ve been playing baseball in France for several years. When I was younger and long before I knew baseball even existed in this country, throwing strikes was second nature. But now it’s deserted me and it’s driving me crazy. More on that in another article.
This article is a follow-up to one written March 19 about what makes a player colorful. It was based on Baseball Personalties, a book written in 1949 by sportswriter Jimmy Powers. What intrigued me was how some of the greatest players didn’t make Powers’ list because, well, they weren’t “colorful,” guys like Lou Gehrig who was a mama’s boy, and Joe DiMaggio who was shy and retiring. “Those players,” he wrote, “were worth more to their teams than a dozen show-offs and blow-hards, yet something was missing, something indefinable.” Keep in mind when Baseball Personalities was written. If it were written today, Joltin Joe, with help from Marilyn Monroe, would probably make it. So would Gehrig with his “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech.
So here, looking at how things were in 1949, are some of the players who did qualify as colorful.
Al Schacht
Dubbed the Clown Prince of Baseball, he was also a pretty good pitcher with the Washington Senators, once striking Babe Ruth out 3 times in a game.
But one of his best plays, after stealing bases, that is,was cornering Connie Mack with a tale of a sensational prospect for the A’s. “I’ll guarantee you he’ll get on base every time he comes to bat,” Schacht said. “He can draw a walk anytime he wants. You see, he’s got one short leg and one long leg. When it’s a knee-high pitch, he sets his stance on his long leg and the ball is too low. When it’s at shoulder height, he sets himself on the short leg and the pitch is too high.”
Babe Herman
Stellar right fielder for the Dodgers in the 1930s and 40s, Babe had the misfortune of some studious athlete asking him what he thought of the Napoleonic Era.
“Error?” asked Herman indignantly. “It should have been scored a hit.”
Honus Wagner
He played 21 years for Pittsburgh and hit .329. But here’s what’s important: he had really long arms. Lefty Gomez, the Yankee pitcher, once said that Wagner “is the only shortstop who ever could tie his shoelaces without bending down.” Wagner also takes the prize for tall stories. Asked by a reporter what the greatest catch he ever made was, Wagner replied, “The greatest catch I ever saw was one I didn’t figure in. A long fly ball was hit to the outfield. Instead of a fence in those days, there was a railroad track back there. It so happened that a train was passing and that ball, by chance, fell into the smokestack of the engine. The outfielder had raced up to the tracks and was just about to turn away when the engineer tooted his whistle. The pressure shot the ball out of the funnel high into the air. The outfielder ran about a hundred yards, fell over a hedge and made the catch lying on his back for the third out which ended the game.”
Lefty Gomez
Not only was he a great pitcher, he was also high strung, eccentric and something of an inventor. His most famous invention was the construction of a revolving goldfish bowl for tired goldfish.
Walter “Rabbit” Maranville
Here’s how Jimmy Powers describes him: “There is no one the crowd loves more than the little man who is a giant killer. Maranville, standing five feet five inches tall with jug handle ears, small nose and mouth and a pair of intent eyes soon became the idol of crowds. He was a cocky, hard-boiled little fellow with more aggressiveness than a Don Juan on a star-lit summer night.” Pretty good writing, huh?
Powers says that next to Honus Wagner, Rabbit was the best shortstop who ever donned a uniform. He played for the Boston Braves, “but in his heyday, not a day went by but he had a snootful.” Rabbit admits it’s true. “Never once did I show up sober. It seemed that the more I drank, the better ball I played. The old gag. I thought myself invincible, the one boy who could drink anything distilled or brewed and keep it up all season. Stealing bases on John Barleycorn was my long suit.” That was until he took a punch at a cop and landed in jail. “I took a tumble for my own good. I’m on the water wagon for good now and the guy don’t live who can bump me off.” Nothing like a happy ending.
Casey Stengel
Ah yes. This is the character who, as manager of the Yankees, invented a language few could understand called “Stengelese.” He’s also the fellow who was playing rightfield for Pittsburgh in 1917 and catching heat from fans. At one point as their howls grew louder and louder, Casey yawned and the jeers became even worse. That’s when Casey lifted his cap. As Powers described it, “Out from under the cap flew a sparrow that he had hidden there just for that purpose of returning the crowd’s action in giving him the bird.” The crowd loved it and Casey was instantly in their good graces. Management, however, was less than pleased and traded Casey to the Phillies. After his playing days, Stengel became manager of a minor league club called the Toledo Mud Hens. “The team so awful,” says Powers, “that players were more interested in price of General Motors than their batting averages. Every day, the bat boy would run out for evening papers to get the latest quotations.
Casey’s patience was at an end and called a meeting in the clubhouse. ‘Since you guys are playing the market,” he said, “I want to give you a hot tip. Buy New York and Pennsylvania. Those stocks are bound to go up tomorrow because 18 of you are going to be taking a long ride on those roads.’”
Babe Ruth
When I got to the Babe, I figured Powers wouldn’t be telling me anything I didn’t already know. I was wrong. He writes that “Slugging the ball was merely one of the ingredients of this baseball hero. The others cannot be measured by records or dry statistics. They grew from his personality and magnetism. He won more hearts than Cupid, had more followers than Alexander the Great. His rise to fame was Horatio Alger fiction. And he did it all with a hickory stick, a broad grin and a heart as big as his fists. At the height of his career, he was practically the harbinger of spring. Before each season, he journeyed to Hot Springs to take the baths which helped melt off his excess weight. A huge corps of reporters would follow Ruth into the baths. They watched him wrap is huge frame in Turkish towels, then mince down the hallway in that peculiar bird step.
The moment his big toe hit the water of the tub, the reporters dashed to the phones to send their stories over the wires. ‘The Big Fellow is tubbing. Spring is here.’”
Satchel Paige
I think I was still in Little League when I saw Paige pitch. Talk about fond memories. It was at Red Wing Stadium in Rochester, New York and Paige must have been in his 60s, well past his prime. He was tall, lanky and grizzled and pitching for the Miami Marlins of the International League.
He did okay, as I recall. But he did better than that when he was first called up to the major leagues and played for Cleveland. When asked how he felt about pitching to big league batters, Satch, pictured above, replied laconically, “Don’t make no difference. Plate’s still the same size.”
Bobo Newsom
Powers describes him as “A self-made screwball on wheels who developed more eccentricities than a contortionist and did more traveling than a carnival show.” He played twice for the St. Louis Browns. On hot days, he’d cover his head with leaves under his cap. “I ain’t so dumb,” he said. “Keeps me from getting sunstroke.”
When Bobo was traded the second time, he delivered the following farewell speech: “The ballclub has been good to me. The newspapers have treated me fairly, but the fans have been my true friends — both of them.” Short, sweet and colorful.
Gabby Hartnett
He was the Cubs catcher for 19 years. Great catcher, great hitter but for Larry French, one of his pitchers, what made him special and colorful was how he handled hurlers. “Let’s say I’m tired, it’s hot and my control is shaky,” French said. “Gabby walks out to the mound and says, ‘Listen Larry, it’s awful hot and this game is dragging. Now the quicker we we end this the quicker we can have a tall, cold glass of beer.’ We’ll, talk about that beer until I can almost taste it. Then Gabby will laugh and say, ‘I know a place around the corner. Let’s get the game over and get ourselves a couple.’
You may not believe it but when Gabby walks behind the plate after that, I feel like I’ve had a good rest and I find that my control has come back. He gets more out of a pitcher than any catcher I ever saw.”
Leo Durocher
Here’s the one player Jimmy Powers hated. “If he’s remembered at all, it will be for his swaggering braggadocio, his vile temper, his arguments, fights and scandals,” Powers wrote. Of course, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t colorful. Durocher is indeed a picture to see. He’s a man with no emotional inhibitions. When he’s pleased, he gloats. When he’s displeased, he screams with rage. With jaws working, he storms out of the dugout. He doesn’t exhort or persuade. He shouts, bellows with temper. Clenches his fists, pokes his finger at the umpire’s chest accusingly. Losing a point with one umpire, he stalks acrdoss the field and vociferously outlines his case to another umpire. He has color. When he was a rookie with the Yankees, Durocher stopped a game in Detroit. Two men were on and Bob Fothergill came to bat. “Fothergill was as big and round as the Rockefeller bank account,” Powers says. Durocher suddenly ran in from his position at shortstop. “Stop the game, stop the game!” What’s the matter, the ump replied. “It’s against the rules, screamed Durocher, leveling his finger at the stout Fothergill. “Both these men can’t bat at once.!” Fothergill was so outraged he struck out. Durocher didn’t apologize. Not his style. “Whenever I stick my head up,” he once said, “there are plenty of guys ready to stomp on it and drive me down again. And why not? That’s what I would do to anybody else in the same circumstances. We ain’t playing this game for fun. We’re playing it for keeps. So why kid around?”
On a road trip in his first year of managing, his team lost most of its games on a certain road trip. He screamed, ‘I’m fighting out there every day because I love the big leagues. I’d give the shirt off my back to play this game. (Nah, I, Don Kladstrup, just made up that last sentence to go with the picture. Sorry for the interruption.) I love this life, these good hotels, these good trains, this good dough. You should, too. Do you want to go back to the tanks, to those blue plate specials, to the buses and the starvation wages? Well, that’s where every one of you are going — unless you get in there and fight!” Later, when he was suspended as manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, one fan moaned, “I liked him because he used to kick dirt on the umpire’s pants. He had color.”
And finally, there’s Jerome “Dizzy” Dean
Dizzy more than lived up to his name as a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, but Powers says he was “dizzy” only in the sense that he was different. “When Grantland Rice was asked for a serious estimate of Dean in 1935, he stated: ‘Dizzy? He’s the best combination of smart baseball intelligence, real ability and picturesque personality on any ball club today.’” When his career as a player ended, Dizzy went into broadcasting. The radio audience loved him for he spoke the language of the Ozarks, but the Missouri teachers rebelled in outrageous indignation.
He was corrupting the language of every school kid, they said. In reply, Dizzy wrote an article for the NYT. “My mother died when I was three and me and my brother Paul had go out and pick cotton to get dough to keep the fire up. I guess we didn’t get much education. And I reckon that’s why when now I come up with an ‘ain’t’ once in a while, I have the Missouri teachers all stirred up. They don’t like it because I say that Marty Marion or Vern Stephens slud into second base. What do they want me to say — slidded?”
I never heard Dean on radio but I did catch him on black and white TV when networks first began broadcasting major league games. I was 12 or 13 at the time and remember one game when the camera happened to catch a young couple in centerfield playing kissy face. The kisses were non-stop, one after another, back and forth. He’d kiss her and then she’d kiss him back. Naturally this caught Dizzy’s attention who finally turned to his sidekick and said, “I think I got it figured out. He’s kissing her on the strikes and she’s kissing him on the balls.”
There was a pregnant pause and the sound of muffled laughter. So much for COLOR.
