Friday, April 22, 1927: Philadelphia
“Jumpin’ Joe Dugan”
Joe Dugan hates playing in Philadelphia. Joe Dugan hates Philadelphia. Joe Dugan hates Philadelphians.
And every time we play the Athletics in Shibe Park, it’s more than clear that the feeling is mutual.
Dugan began his major league career here when he was barely 20 years old. He was a promising shortstop, but it was a broken promise. In his first three years with the A’s, Joe committed over 100 errors. And as bad as he was in the field, he was worse at the plate. In 1918, his second year, Joe had the dubious honor of having the lowest batting average in the American League. When Joe first came to the Yankees midway through the season in ’22, as he walked into the locker room, Carl Mays greeted him with a hearty, “Welcome, 195!,” which was Dugan’s average that miserable season. Dugan immediately charged him.
Everybody who’s ever met Carl Mays thinks he’s a prick, right up there with Cobb, so when Dugan went after Mays within the first thirty seconds of walking into the Yankee clubhouse, he immediately became one of the most popular boys on the the team — especially with Miller Huggins. Hugg is a real gentleman but he loathed managing Mays so much that I once overheard him tell a reporter, “If Carl Mays was in the gutter and I had the opportunity, I’d kick him.”
The Philadelphia fans are notorious hecklers, as bad on their own players as they are on opponents — maybe worse, because once they get one of their own players in their gun sights, they’re on him 77 times a year. More than a few fans come out to the ballpark just to yell at the players. Shawkey says it makes them less likely to beat their wives.
Guys like Ruth and Schoolboy Hoyt love it when fans get on them. Hoyt loves shutting them up, and Ruth loves winning them over. Outside of screwing, eating and hitting home runs — and I have no idea in what order the Babe would list his preferences — Ruth loves nothing more than jockeying with fans during a game. When Ruth hits a home run or makes a great play in the field, he’ll often bow to the same fans who’ve been riding him all afternoon. They love it. He completely wins them over. Until the next game, that is. Then the Babe and the fans start the same dance all over again.
As long as no one screams anything about Ruth’s mother or calls him a n*gg*r, the Babe’s alright with almost anything they yell at him. “They can call me overpaid, fat, ugly, stupid — hell, they can even call me a queer. They just can’t get personal,” is how the Babe puts it.
As for Hoyt, his favorite line is to yell back at some blowhard in the stands, “Hey, buddy! You might want to go home and check on your wife. Two of our ballplayers are missing!”
Joe Dugan, unfortunately, never had the temperament for jousting with fans. Especially when he was a young kid with the A’s, it was just too tough for him to take. A number of times it got so bad he just up and left the team. He’s not a big drinker like Meusel and Ruether, so he wasn’t getting lost in a bottle, he was just getting lost. The A’s would send folks out to try and find Dugan, but they never could. He wasn’t anywhere in the city. He was just gone.
Jumping the team like that earned him his nickname, Jumpin’ Joe. You’d think he’d mind being called Jumpin’ Joe, because it would remind him of his bad times in Philly, but he doesn’t.
The sad part is that Connie Mack, who’s been managing the A’s since the turn of the century (literally), always loved Dugan. He personally signed him.
Dugan loves telling the story about how when he was seventeen, he was eating dinner with his family — he’s one of 10 brothers and sisters — and the doorbell rings, so one of his sisters gets up to answer the door.
His sister comes back to the table and says, “There’s a man at the door named Mack.” Joe’s father tells Joe to get rid of the guy because, “We don’t need any insurance or bible salesman bothering us at dinner time.”
When Joe goes to the door he sees a face he knows from the newspapers, since Connie Mack’s Athletics had won three of the last four World Series. Once inside the house Mr. Mack tells Dugan’s old man that his A’s scouts think a lot of his son. Then he places five $100 dollar bills on their dining room table and says, “When young Joseph comes of age and decides to play organized baseball, I sincerely hope you will let him join the Philadelphia Athletics ball club.”
Young Joseph is speechless. His old man is not. According to Jumpin’ Joe, his father stands up, shakes Connie Mack’s hand and says, “Hell, for $500 you can have the whole family, right now.”
Joe played a year of college ball at Holy Cross, and then he went to the Philadelphia Athletics ball club, as promised, even though other teams were offering him more. After a couple of months with the A’s, Joe would have taken less to be able to play anyplace but Philadelphia. A lot less.
Almost from the start the Philadelphia fans were merciless in how they treated Joe. And it got worse with each error. Even later, when Joe was playing well in the field and at the plate — and by his fourth year in the league he was batting .320 and regarded as one of the top defensive third basemen in the game — the fans just wouldn’t let up on him.
I know because a couple of times at the ballpark, I was in the stands yelling along with the rest.
During college for three springs, at the end of the year, just before my summer league games would begin, my roommate Steven (whose house I now rent) and I would drive from Penn State to Philadelphia to see the A’s play for a couple of days. We’d sleep overnight in Steven’s car. This was back when Dugan was at his worst. And so were we.
In 1918, for two games in a row, Steven and I sat along the third base line, amongst a mob that was brutal to Dugan. Steven was bad, but I was worse. We were having a blast, trying to outdo each other both games. The second day, Dugan made two errors in the second inning that ended up costing the A’s five runs. From that point on, given that the A’s were the worst team in the league and the game was out of reach, riding Dugan became the focus of our afternoon. I had too much beer in me to recall most of the details, but there’s one moment from that afternoon I wish I could forget.
As the A’s walked off the field for the last time, I shouted, “Hey, Dugan!” And then, just before I could share something smart with the rest of the mob, Joe looked up and, from less than a hundred feet away, he stared right at me and loudly asked, “What? What more do you have to say, kid?” And then he trudged slowly into the dugout.
A couple of times since I’ve been with the Yankees, late at night on the train, I think I’ve caught Jumpin’ Joe looking at me, trying to remember where he knows me from. A couple of times I’ve come close to confessing. But then I think better of it.
What I tell myself is that we’re all part of the mob. Every one of us. It’s in our nature. The fan, the beer vendor, the shopkeeper, the school teacher, the college kid, the cop, the judge, the banker, the bootlegger, the gambler, the politician, the preacher, the musician and the whore. Even the dirty faced kids who sneak into the ballpark. We ballplayers think we’re different, because for a few years we get to play out our dreams between the white lines on a ball field. But for us, every game there’s a price we pay. And that price is being at the mercy of the mob.
Especially in Philadelphia.
