The Sunday Funnies

Jack Dunn, who operated the old Baltimore Orioles of the International League in the 1910s and 20s, was known as a top-notch judge of talent. Among the stars he discovered, signed and later peddled to major league teams were Babe Ruth and Lefty Grove.

In 1921, Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, heard that Dunn was about to buy a young outfielder out of the lower level Sally League. Giffith had never heard of Goose Goslin, but if Dunn wanted Goslin enough to pay the rumored $5,000 for him, the Old Fox reasoned, Goslin must be good.

And indeed, Goslin was hitting .390 for the Columbia team. So Griffith hustled down to South Carolina and struck his own deal for Goslin, upping the ante to $6,000 and landing the player, still sight unseen.

Griffith pocketed the paperwork, climbed into the stands chortling to himself over his sharp manoeuvre -- and promptly witnessed his newly signed slugger get conked on the head by a fly ball.

(It all worked out OK; Goslin was the regular left fielder on all three pennant-winning clubs in Washington history and wound up in the Hall of Fame.)

The Sunday Funnies

Lefty Gomez was good enough at pitching to make the Hall of Fame, and self-deprecating enough that you wouldn't know it from his stories.

Another Hall of Fame hurler, Robin Roberts, heard a number of Gomez's stories over the years and summed them up:

"Just once I'd like to hear Gomez tell a story in which he got someone out."

The Sunday Funnies

Let's go for four in this sequence of stories, even if we start wandering away from Zeke Bonura and Jimmy Dykes.

This one is from the creation of Connie Mack's support staff in his dotage. Mack and former star Al Simmons are talking contract.

The elderly Mack: "You know, Al, that there will always be a place for you with this team."

Simmons: "Yeah, but would you make sure your sons know that?"

The Sunday Funnies

Having told a couple of Zeke Bonura stories, let's milk Jimmy Dykes -- almost certainly the source of those two -- for another.

A bit of background: Dykes had a long playing career, mostly with the Philadelphia Athletics -- he held the Athletics franchise record for games played for decades until Bert Campaneris broke it in Oakland -- and was part of the core of Connie Mack's second dynasty.

The 1929-31 Athletics won two World Series and lost the third in seven games. Dykes wasn't at the level of Hall of Fame teammates Lefty Grove, Jimmy Foxx, Mickey Cochrane and Al Simmons, but he wasn't far off. (Neither were Max Bishop, George Earnshaw, Bing Miller and Mule Haas; it was a legitimately great team.)

But it was the Depression, and Mack sold off his stars after losing the 1931 Series -- Grove and Foxx to the Red Sox, Cochrane to Detroit, Simmons, Earnshaw and Dykes to the White Sox. A few years later, Dykes became the player manager with the Sox, then transtioned to bench manager. He held the job through World War II, then got canned during the 1946 season.

Dykes never finished higher than third with Chicago, but was regarded as a good manager; the sense was that he got more out of the limited talent he had than most would have (probably true). Meanwhile, the aging Mack was presiding over a continuing decline in fortunes in Philadelphia. The 1946 A's went 49-105, and the team had lost at least 90 games every year but one in the decade.

While nobody could fire Mack -- he also owned the team -- and he was determined to get 50 years in as manager, his sons knew they had to do something.

So they rebanded some of the dynastic disapora. Cochrane returned to serve as general manager. Simmons was brought back for the coaching staff. And Dykes was offered a position as "associate manager." Mack, well into his 80s, would be, in effect, a figurehead; Dykes would be doing the day-to-day work. (Dykes got the team back above .500 the next three years.)

The deal was struck, and all that remained was the formalities. Dykes was ushered into Mack's office to be reunited with the old man who had launched his career so many years before.

"Jimmy," Mack began, "I can't afford to pay you what you deserve."

"Jeeze," replied Dykes, "do we have to pick up right where we left off?"

The Sunday Funnies

Continuing with Zeke Bonura stories (because if there's one thing I've learned from writing the Sunday Funnies, it's that fitting two punchlines into one post means I need to find another story for the next week):

Bonura spent five years playing for Jimmy Dykes with the White Sox, then was traded to Washington. One day he found himself perched on third base and looking into the White Sox dugout, where he saw his old manager swatting a mosquito.

This, for some reason, fired up the synapses in Bonura's brain. The steal sign! 

So the slow-legged slugger took off for home. And made it, partly because the Sox were taken by surprise and partly because Bonura knocked the ball out of the catcher's hands.

"I forgot I wasn't on his team anymore," Zeke explained after the game.

The Sunday Funnies

Zeke Bonura was a stereotype: A first baseman in the 1930s, a slugger who was less than adept in the field, slow afoot and supposedly slow of wit as well.

He was a college man -- Loyola University in his home city of New Orleans -- so I doubt he was truly as dumb as the stories have it, but that's the basis of a number of these tales.

He broke in with the Chicago White Sox under Jimmy Dykes and spent most of his career playing for Dykes, who despaired of ever getting Bonura to learn the signs.

Now, today we recognize the limitations of the sacrifice bunt, and particularly with a hitter as productive as Bonura, but managers of Dykes' era didn't have access to the analytics of today. Everybody was expected to bunt, even in that high-scoring era, and that included Bonura. The problem was getting him to realize that he was supposed to bunt.

One day an exhasperated Dykes simply yelled from the dugout at Bonura: "Bunt, you big meathead. Bunt! B-U-N-T, bunt!"

Bonura, perhaps figuring that Dykes couldn't seriously be giving such a command so openly, swung away.

The Sunday Funnies

Every year for Christmas Week I post a Rickey Henderson story, since Rickey was born on Christmas.

And some year I'm going to run out.

World Series, 2004. The day after the Boston Red Sox win Game 4 to complete the sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals, Rickey calls the Red Sox front office. He wants tickets to Game Six.

The Sunday Funnies

For a time during World War II, radio broadcasters were forbidden from mentioning the weather. This was on the theory that such information could aid enemy pilots.

The edict posed a problem for baseball broadcasts during rain delays. On one occasion, Dizzy Dean and his booth partner killed more than an hour with chatter during a delay without ever mentioning why they weren't describing the game.

Finally Ol' Diz had had enough.

"If you want to know why they ain't playing, just stick your head out the window,"

The Sunday Funnies

Early in his managerial career, Casey Stengel had a theatrical move he'd deploy when arguing with an umpire: He'd fall to the ground in a mock faint.

That ended when he tried it on veteran umpire Beans Reardon. Reardon watched Stengel collapse, then did the same.

Stengel, telling the story in years to come, recounted: "When I peeked over and saw Reardon on the ground, I knew I was licked."

The Sunday Funnies

The 1965 World Series pitted the Minnesota Twins (hooray!) against the Los Angeles Dodgers (boo!).

The Dodgers would have started the great Sandy Koufax in the opener, but it was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. So manager Walter Alston started Don Drysdale instead, which is not a bad fallback.

Except that Drysdale didn't fare well that day at the old Met. The Twins scored six runs in the third inning and drove him out of the box, and Minnesota won 8-2.

After the game, the long-retired Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez stuck his head into Alston's office to say: "Hey, Alston. Bet you wish Drysdale was Jewish too."

The Sunday Funnies

Ping Bodie, the subject of the one-liner cited in last week's post, was once asked what it was like being Babe Ruth's roommate on the road.

He replied: "I don't room with Ruth. I room with his suitcase."

The Sunday Funnies

This line, composed by Arthur "Bugs" Baer, was famous enough to get the humorist a three-year contract from newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst.

When Yankees outfielder Ping Bodie was thrown out trying to steal second, Baer wrote:

"He had larceny in his heart, but his feet were honest."

The Sunday Funnies

Merry Christmas ... and Happy Birthday to the great Rickey Henderson, a staple figure in these stories.

In the last week of his lone season with the Red Sox, Chairman Tom Werner asked Henderson what he would like for his ‘going-away’ gift. Henderson said he wasn’t going anywhere, but he would like owner John Henry’s Mercedes. Werner said it would be tough to get the same make and model in less than a week and Henderson said, “No, I want his car.”

The Sox got Henderson a Red Thunderbird and when he saw it on the field before the last game of the season, Rickey said, “Whose ugly car is on the field?”

The Sunday Funnies

The Brooklyn Dodgers return to Flatbush by train from spring training in the late 1940s, and they are greeted by a mob of fans -- and a live radio announcer who grabs player after player for quick "interviews."

Each is asked how the team will fare in the coming season, and each answers with the expected optimism. This is our year. Going to win the pennant.

"And here's Pistol Pete Reiser," exclaims the radio host as the oft-injured star centerfielder gets off the train. "Pete, where do you think you'll finish the season?"

Reiser replies: "Peck Memorial Hospital."

The Sunday Funnies

Red Faber was one of the 17 grandfathered spitball pitchers whose career survived the banning of doctored pitches; he's one of three of that group to be inducted into the Hall of Fame (along with Stan Covaleski and Burleigh Grimes)

This tale comes from the 1917 World Series. Faber started Game Two for the White Sox, and in the fifth inning found himself at second base with teammate Buck Weaver on third and two out. For no apparent reason, Faber then broke for third. After he slid into the base, Weaver sourly looked down and inquired: "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Back to pitch," Faber replied.

The Sunday Funnies

1934. Moe Berg is a seldom-used backup catcher on the Washington Senators team, and he is not in prime condition when he is suddenly inserted into the lineup to catch on a hot, humid day in Philadelphia.

In the seventh inning, Earl Whitehill, the Washington pitcher, and Doc Cramer, outfielder for the Athletics, start doing that always-irritating cat-and-mouse game. Cramer gets in the box, then backs out; Whitehill takes the rubber, then steps off.

And behind the plate, Berg is bobbing up and down, getting in his crouch when it looks like the game will resume, standing up when the pitcher or hitter stalls again. And he's getting progressively angrier with both.

Suddenly he calls time. Umpire Bill McGowan asks why. Berg's response: He takes off his mask, his chest protector, his shin guards, piles them all on home plate and tells McGowan: "Ill be back when these two guys decide to play baseball. Right now, I'm going to go take a shower."

The Sunday Funnies

Jim O'Rourke, a Hall of Fame outfielder (among other positions) from the 19th century, was so given to florid outbursts of rhetoric that he was dubbed "Orator." One famous example, after one of his teammates asked the player-manager for a $10 advance on his salary:

“The exigencies of the occasion and the condition of our exchequer will not permit anything of that sort at this period of our existence. Subsequent developments in the field of finance may remove the present gloom and we may emerge into a condition where we may see our way clear to reply in the affirmative to your exceedingly modest request.”

Imagine hanging around a guy who talked like that all season.

The Sunday Funnies

Today I offer the out-of-context fractured syntax and insight of Oscar Gamble, a 1970s platoon outfielder-designated hitter and possessor of one of the most glorious Afros ever seen on a major league field.

Said the well-traveled Gamble:

"They don't believe it be like it is, but it do."

The Sunday Funnies

The game time temperature for the 1966 All Star Game in St. Louis was 105. Spectators were passing out from the heat, and players were using smelling salts in the dugouts.

After the game, somebody asked Casey Stengel what he thought of the new stadium in downtown St. Louis. Replied The Old Perfessor, "Well, I'll tell ya, young fella, it sure seems to hold the heat real good."

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."