Pinstripe Empire (32 page)

Some thought Joe wouldn’t dive or make an attempt to catch a ball that might make him look bad. But Yogi Berra claimed otherwise: “You never saw him dive ’cause he was always in the right position. In those days, you played each team twenty-two times. You knew where to play. And Joe knew better than most of us.”

His baserunning was seldom marred by bad judgment, and he attained great acceleration with a very long stride. It was not a base-stealing era, but he was fast.

As he arrived two years after Ruth’s last Yankee season, he joined a club led by Gehrig and Dickey, but in fact it was his from the start. He had that sort of commanding presence. Gehrig, for all his greatness, never sought that spotlight. Joe basked in it. And so under McCarthy’s guidance, the Yankees took on a businesslike persona as never before. The team dressed right, arrived on time, played the game right, looked sharp on the trains and in the dining halls, and went about their business as though writing a textbook on how to be a Yankee. It made Ruppert proud, to be sure. It was just the way he had always wanted the team to appear. Ruth had held that back.

Combs, badly injured in ’35, was done. He’d become a coach, joining Fletcher and Johnny Schulte. After starting out in right, Joe would take over center field, and it would remain his until he was ready to turn it over to Mantle.

He had a late start: A burn from a diathermy machine treating a spring training ankle injury delayed his debut until May 3. On July 29 in Detroit, he was involved in a full-speed collision with the center fielder, Myril Hoag, that was nearly fatal. Two days later, Hoag was found unconscious in his hotel room and rushed to the hospital with a brain clot. He could have died, but he survived the primitive brain surgery of the day, missed the rest of the season, then went on with his career.

In only 138 games, Joe rang up 206 hits and batted .323/29/125. He scored 132 runs. He struck out only 39 times in 668 plate appearances, and in fact would fan only 369 times in his career while hitting 361 home runs, an astonishing statistic. Those 39 strikeouts must have been due to his rookie adjustments—he never had that many again. There was no Rookie of the Year Award before 1947, but Joe’s 1936 season set a standard few rookies could ever dream of.

Joe was the first rookie to play in the All-Star Game, and from 1936 to 1942 he played in every inning of every one.

IT WAS IN 1936 that Hyman Rotkin opened the Jerome Cafeteria on River Avenue, where fans could dine off a tray before or after games. The cafeteria was almost as much an institution as DiMaggio until it closed in 1976.

In addition to DiMaggio, the Yanks would also welcome Jake Powell from Washington (the Chapman trade, in mid-June) and Monte Pearson from Cleveland, obtained in a trade for Johnny Allen. Pearson for Allen was the trade of two temperamental yet talented players, and Allen was far from done—he would go 20–10 in 1936, 15–1 in 1937 (losing on the last day), and 14–8 in 1938. Pearson, a six-foot right-hander from the University of California, had broken in with the Indians in ’33 with a 2.33 ERA but had fallen to 8–13 by ’35. Considered both temperamental and a bit of a hypochrondriac, he was made trade bait by the Indians, who were set to give Bob Feller his place in the rotation in ’36. Monte would give the Yankees five seasons and compile a 63–27 record, a .700 percentage.

The Yanks also added a workhorse, Irving “Bump” Hadley, a big right-hander, in another trade with Washington. Hadley was thirty-one when he joined the Yankees and had posted nine seasons of double-digit wins to that point.

With DiMaggio exciting the baseball world, the Yankees went about their business to reclaim their position atop the standings after a three-year absence. The 1936 team won 102 games to finish first by nineteen and a half, pretty much wrapping it up in early August. Attendance jumped by 220,000, and Gehrig, not undone by all the DiMaggio attention, had a .354/49/152 season, his high-water mark in home runs. He scored 167 runs and won his second MVP Award. Dickey hit .362, a record for catchers that stood until it was equaled by Mike Piazza in 1997 and broken by Joe Mauer in 2009.

Lazzeri, batting eighth, participated in a 25–2 win at Shibe Park on May 24, a Yankee record for runs in a game. Tony hit three homers that day, two of them grand slams, had 15 total bases, and drove in 11 runs in the rout. Crosetti belted two that day and DiMaggio one. The car poolers from San Francisco could barely have anticipated anything quite like this just twelve weeks earlier as they climbed into Tony’s Ford for the cross-country journey to Florida.

____________

THE FIRST SUBWAY SERIES in thirteen years found the Yankees and the Giants facing off, as they had in 1921–23. This would be their first Series without Babe Ruth. President Roosevelt, running for reelection, attended game two at the Polo Grounds, departing in the seventh inning with his party of forty-eight as automobiles drove across the field to the center-field exit.

The turning point for the 1936 World Series was game four at Yankee Stadium, with Pearson, 19–7 in the regular season, beating Carl Hubbell 5–2. It broke a seventeen-game winning streak for King Carl, including his win in the opening game of the Series, and it gave the Yanks a 3 to 1 lead in front of 66,669, a Series record attendance. After losing game five, the Yankees wrapped it up at the Polo Grounds the next day with a 13–5 win as Gomez won it with 2
⅔
innings of relief work by Murphy. Jake Powell scored eight runs and hit .455 for the Series, making the new guy very much welcome, while Lazzeri added a grand slam and drove in seven, capping his last big season with the Yankees.

Dickey hit only .120 in the Series, but it was later discovered that he had played with two broken bones in his left wrist after being hit by a pitch late in the season. He asked Doc Painter to keep his secret, and he didn’t miss an inning.

As was the custom at the Polo Grounds, where the clubhouses were in the outfield, the fans exited with the players across the field, celebrating with the Yankees and consoling the Giants until the players climbed their staircases to continue on their own. It was a practice unimaginable today. Even in Yankee Stadium, fans would exit across the field toward the exits under the bleachers, although there, the players escaped to their respective dugouts.

(The practice of letting the fans onto Yankee Stadium’s field after the games ended in 1966, when some aggressive fans headed straight for Mickey Mantle, determined to reach him. From that day forward, the Yankees assigned a special “Mantle detail” of ushers to form a flying wedge around him as he trotted off the field.)

IN 1937 YANKEE STADIUM redefined the bleachers, moving them in toward the flagpole and the Huggins monument from 490 feet to a less preposterous 461. Again engaging Osborn Engineering, they originally planned to double-deck the bleachers and enlarge the ballpark’s capacity to eighty-four thousand, but that plan never played out.

In ’37 the Yankees again won 102 games and their ninth pennant—tying the Athletics for the most in the American League—and their sixth world championship, the most of any franchise. It is a distinction they’ve maintained ever since.

Gomez and Ruffing were both 20-game winners. Gehrig hit .351 and ran his consecutive-game streak to 1,965. After the season, he went off to Hollywood to make
Rawhide
after shooting the opening scene at Grand Central Terminal.

DiMaggio, in his second season, led the league with 46 homers and 151 runs scored while batting .346. The 46 homers by a right-handed hitter stood as a club record until Alex Rodriguez hit 48 in 2005 (and then 54 in 2007).

The team drew just under a million in the year that finally saw the right-field grandstand extended into fair territory, creating a right-field bullpen to separate it from the bleachers. The upper deck that was never there for Babe Ruth was at last in place.

The season also saw the arrival of young Tommy Henrich. Henrich, from the sandlots of Massillon, Ohio, signed with the Indians in 1934 but found himself going nowhere fast in the Cleveland organization. By the end of 1936, there was confusion over which team was actually controlling him—the Indians, their New Orleans farm team, or the independently owned Milwaukee Brewers, to whom New Orleans claimed to have sold him. Henrich and his dad decided to write to Commissioner Landis about his situation. He met with Landis personally, bringing no legal representation with him. The teams sent their most eloquent officials. Landis sided with Henrich and declared him a free agent, stating Henrich “has been ‘covered up’ for the benefit of the Cleveland club and that his transfer by New Orleans to Milwaukee was directed by the Cleveland club and prevented his advancement.”

“The judge could have let it go,” said Henrich, “but because he didn’t like [Cleveland] scout Cy Slapnicka, and because I think he got a kick out of me writing to him and standing up for my rights, he declared me a free agent.”

He signed with the Yankees in April of ’37 for a $25,000 bonus, rejecting eight other offers, and was farmed out to Newark.

In early May, after losing two in a row at Detroit, McCarthy overheard his outfielder Roy Johnson saying, “What’s the guy expect to do, win every day?”

Johnson, a thirty-four-year-old veteran, should have known better. As soon as McCarthy returned to the team hotel, he phoned Barrow. “Get rid
of Johnson,” he said. “I don’t want him with us anymore. Get rid of him right away.”

“Why the big rush?” asked Barrow.

“I won’t play him again,” McCarthy said adamantly. “Send me the kid who’s at Newark.” And that was how Henrich got to the major leagues.

McCarthy could be like that. All business. Some years later, his backup catcher, Buddy Rosar, wanted to leave the team to go to Buffalo where his wife was having a baby. McCarthy said no, and Rosar went AWOL. End of Buddy Rosar.

Henrich didn’t let this opportunity get away. The man who would come to be known as Old Reliable hit .320 in 67 games for the Yankees that year as he began an eleven-season run (interrupted by war for three years) that would get him to nine World Series.

1937 also marked the strange demise of Johnny Broaca.
⁷
He’d pitched for ex–Red Sox star Joe Wood at Yale, and although a bad arm forced him from the team, he did graduate from the prestigious school and entered pro baseball. He joined the Yankees in 1934 and in his third start pitched a one-hitter against St. Louis, striking out 10.

The native of Lawrence, Massachusetts, would go 12–9 in that rookie season, then 15–7 in 1935. He was 12–7 in the world championship year of ’36, and then got married after the season. But on July 16, 1937, with his wife eight months pregnant, he abruptly left the team, leaving no trace of his whereabouts, not even to his wife. He disappeared. No player had ever jumped the team since Ruppert owned it.

When a reporter asked McCarthy if it might cost him his World Series share, McCarthy snapped, “Might? He’s lost that already!”

By September his wife had filed for divorce, and the proceeding, on Cape Cod, was the stuff of tabloid journalism. She accused him of beating her, chasing her out of the house in her underwear, threatening to cut her throat or shoot her in the head before giving her any money.

When, late in ’38, the Yankees made an overture to bring him back, he insisted on being reimbursed for medical expenses. “Forget it,” he was told. He had tried his hand at pro boxing but hadn’t won a fight. The Yankees sent him off to Cleveland, where he pitched in relief in 1939. He went to the Giants in 1940 but never got into a game. They released him, and he was done.

After domestic duty during World War II, he returned to Lawrence and earned a living as a laborer. The Yale grad and owner of a World Series ring—teammate of Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio—was now digging ditches. He had no contact with his son. He lived in a small apartment. His fellow workers knew to never ask him about baseball. And he died in 1985, his son never having a clue about what went wrong.

ON MAY 25, the baseball world was shocked by what looked like a repeat of the horrific Mays-Chapman moment of seventeen years earlier.

The Yanks were hosting the Tigers, whose player-manager, Mickey Cochrane, was in the lineup facing Bump Hadley. In the third inning, Cochrane tied the game 1–1 with a home run. He came to bat again in the fifth with a man on. The count was 3 and 1 when Hadley threw a fastball that struck Mickey in the head. He threw up his right arm to protect himself, but it was too late. Dickey watched him fall to the ground, screaming, “God almighty!”

Cochrane was carried on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance and on to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Some players cried; others prayed. Cochrane was one of the most well-liked players in baseball. He hovered between life and death for forty-eight hours. A leading brain specialist attended to him, along with Dr. Robert Emmett Walsh, the Yankees’ team doctor. Hadley went to the hospital, but didn’t get to Mickey’s bedside. Bump said, “I don’t know why the ball sailed; it just did.”

Cochrane suffered a triple skull fracture. Ten days went by before he was placed on a special railroad car to Detroit. Fortunately for Hadley, he did not have Mays’s reputation as a headhunter, and given the circumstances—a 3-and-1 count, a runner on—no one thought this was intentional. To his great relief, Detroit fans cheered Hadley when he pitched there on June 5. Cochrane recovered, but never played another game. That was how his Hall of Fame career ended.

The Yanks won the ’37 World Series over the Giants in five games, as Lazzeri batted .400 to lead all hitters in his farewell to the Yanks. He would be released later in October, the Yankees having his replacement, Joe Gordon, ready to move up from Newark.

(On August 6, 1946, Tony Lazzeri died at forty-two. He suffered a fall down the stairs at his Millbrae, California, home and was discovered about thirty-six hours later by his wife, who had been returning from vacation.
Whether brought on by a heart attack or an epileptic fit, it was an unexpected loss for his friends in the Yankee organization.)

Gomez won the first and last games with complete-game gems, with Ruffing and Pearson winning the other two. Only Carl Hubbell could stop the Yanks, winning game four 7–3 over Hadley. The clincher was again at the Polo Grounds, and again the Giants had to sit in their silent clubhouse and listen to “The Beer Barrel Polka” being belted out next door by the jubilant Yankees.