The Sunday Funnies

Leo Durocher describes in Nice Guys Finish Last a bizarre, and once infamous, game in Cincinnati between the Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals in the days of the Gas House Gang, for which Durocher was the shortstop.

It was one of the first night games in major league history -- the Reds, under Larry MacPhail, had gotten permission to play one night game against each team in the National League -- and the Cardinals were a big draw. Tiny Crosley Field was packed, literally, to over flowing; fans were standing in foul territory.

Leo, via his talented ghostwriter, Ed Linn:

"The field was completely encircled by fans. They were lined up three or four deep all the way down the foul lines, around the catcher and in massed ranks behind the outfielders. ... You couldn't swing without coming within a couple of feet of somebody's head. ...

"As one inning was about to start, I looked around and saw (left fielder Joe) Medwick standing on the line a few feet behind third base arguing with a gorgeous blonde. Paul Dean was already in his motion, and since you coulnd't hear anythign from here to there I had to go running in and scale my glove past his ear.

"The best was yet to come. In the last of the eighth we were leading 2-1. The first man went out the next man walked, and up to the plate strode Babe Herman, Before he got there, the blonde -- who had moved to within a few feet of the plate by this time --stepped out of the crowd and plucked the bat from his hand. She took her stance in the batter;s box, high heels and all, and motioned for Paul to pitch to her. You can look it up, this is true. Best-looking strike zone I ever saw. She had been telling Medwick all night that she could hit better than he could, and now she was going to prove it.

"... Poor Paul didn't know what to do. Two times in a row he went into a big exaggerated windup and then stepped back and looked in toward the homeplate umpire, Bill Stewart. What could Stewart do? Judge Landis was there in his box, and even he had been afraid to do anything. We were playing this game only because:

"(1) MacPhail wasn't going to give all that money back.

"(2) If we didn't play it they'd have torn the park down.

"With nobody making a move, Paul Dean bent forward as if he were throwing the ball to a little kid and flipped it up to the plate underhanded.

"And she hit it. She hit a little twisting ground ball down between first base and the pitcher's mound and set out -- lickety-split, clickety-click -- for first base. Paul Dean, game to the end, fielded the ball and threw her out.

"Turned out she was a nightclub singer. Got herself a lot of publicity and was promptly hired by a Cincinnati nightclub, who billed her as the only woman ever to come to bat in a big-league ball game."

The Sunday Funnies

The 100th anniversary of Frank Sinatra's birth was last weekend, so I missed the opportunity to peg this story. But we'll do it a week late:

Sinatra had season tickets to the Dodgers in Los Angeles when Leo Durocher, a long time pal of his, was coaching under Walt Alston. His box, according to Durocher, was about ten feet from where Durocher liked to stand. Leo:

"On this particular night, we had been accusing the Milwaukee pitcher, Lou Burdette, of throwing spitters, and the umpires -- who knew Burdette was throwing spitters and also knew that they weren't going to do anything about it -- had ordered us to shut up.

"From ten feet behind me a voice which sounded remarkably like mine hollered, 'Why don't you give him a bucket of water?'

"The umpire spun around and pointed at me. 'That will be enough out of you.'

"Who me? I didn't say nothing!

"A couple of pitches later: 'Send for the lifeguards! There's a man drowning out there!'

"This time the mask came off. 'I'm not warning you again, Durocher!'

"A few minutes later, we're out on the field, our pitcher winds up and Frank yells, 'Stick it in his ear!'

"I'm out of the game, and Frank is on the floor, laughing."

Roger Kahn, Leo Durocher and "Rickey & Robinson"

A fan in Pittsburgh holds a sign Wednesday honoring
Jackie Robinson.

Wednesday was Jackie Robinson Day, baseball's annual display of self-satisfaction over the
integration of the major leagues in 1947.

During the offseason Roger Kahn, who covered the Dodgers for the now-defunct Herald Tribune for a couple of years in the Robinson era and who became famous as the author of "The Boys of Summer," a marvelous book celebrating that team, hit the bestseller lists again with "Rickey & Robinson,"

I can't claim to have read all of Kahn's books, but I've read enough of them to expect him to write in the first person. I can't claim to have read all the books about Jackie Robinson, but I've read enough of them to believe I have a handle on the story of breaking the color barrier.

"Rickey & Robinson" is indeed in the first person, which grated on me somewhat because, at least regarding 1947, Kahn wasn't there. By the time he was handed the Dodgers beat, Rickey was in Pittsburgh and Robinson an established star. Still, the book relies so heavily on what Kahn says he was told over the years -- by Robinson, by Rickey, by others -- that I never figured out how it would work in a more distant third person.

There are details and claims that I haven't seen before (again, there are many recountings of this theme that I'm not familar with), and several of them are minor, But one notion that I haven't seen in print before seems rather significant, and I really wonder if it's true -- that the suspension of Dodger manager Leo Durocher for the 1947 season was based not so much on his sexual-marital scandal with actress Laraine Day as for throwing the 1946 pennant race for the profit of his mobster-gambling buddies.

Kahn is in his mid 80s, and everybody else he mentions in connection with this story is long dead. Durocher. "Shondor" Birns, the Cleveland racketeer who supposedly cleaned up wagering against the Dodgers in their best-of-three tiebreaker series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Ford Frick, then the National League president, who Kahn describes as deflecting his decades-later questions about Durocher in 1946 by talking about curling. Bill Veeck, who is Kahn's chief source on the story.

The notion of Durocher fixing a pennant race is so out-of-sorts with his win-at-any-price persona that I was immediately skeptical of Kahn's story. Yet upon examination, it is uncomfortably plausible.

Durocher was hanging out with a bad news crowd. He was habitually short of money. He did live by a moral code, it it can be called such, that was amazingly short-sighted and self-centered. I can't rule out the possibility that he shed some uncomfortable debt by mishandling his pitching staff at the end of the season.

And his selection of Ralph Branca to start the first game of that playoff series was, at the least, odd. Of the nine men who did the bulk of the pitching for the Dodgers that year, Branca (in his age 20 season) worked the fewest innings and had by far the worst ERA. Durocher frequently did the unexpected -- playing a hunch, he called it -- but off the stats, Branca was the worst possible selection.

The Durocher suspension was, at the time, as big a story as Robinson himself was, and losing Durocher was a blow to Rickey's plan, Today it's almost forgotten. Kahn's story, as far as I can tell, has drawn little attention. Durocher is in the Hall of Fame, a selection that suggests that if a dalliance with game-fixing was rumored at the time it didn't have legs. But if he did indeed fix, or semi-fix, the 1946 pennant, he doesn't belong in the Hall. I suspect I'll never really know.

The Sunday Funnies

Joe Pepitone has been traded to the Cubs, and his new manager, Leo Durocher, knows him only by reputation. Durocher's been in the National League, Pepitone in the American. So when Pepi reports, Leo sits down with him and they discuss such topics what positions he can play (first base and outfield) and Pepi's abilities as a base runner.

Pepitone assures Durocher that he can steal bases, and when Pepi gets a hit in his first game, Leo decides to test this claim. He has third base coach Peanuts Lowry give him the steal sign -- a wink.

Pepitone doesn't go. Next pitch, Lowry winks again at the baserunner; again Pepitone ignores the steal sign.

Third pitch, Lowry again winks at Pepitone, and this time Pepi responds: He blows Lowry a kiss.