Pinstripe Empire (41 page)

In other areas, MacPhail was quite enlightened. In ’46, he prepared a confidential memo on the sacred Reserve Clause, which four years later came to light during congressional hearings before Brooklyn congressman Emanuel Celler. In the memo, he stated that the clause in baseball contracts binding players to their teams beyond the expiration of the contract itself “could not be enforced in the courts,” and that salary disputes should be resolved through arbitration (which came to be twenty-seven years later). He also voiced support of expansion to six major leagues as opposed to the established two.

MOST OF THE $600,000 in changes to Yankee Stadium took place over the winter of 1945–46, and so dramatic were the changes—and so well received—that Arthur Daley of the
Times
suggested that MacPhail “ought to arrange inspection tours for [fans], a fifty-cent tour … in the Radio City style.”

Forty years later, the Yankees did in fact initiate tours, run by team historian Tony Morante, who with his father had earlier been part of the Mantle security escort after games.

There was fan discontent over the rebranding of a number of reserved seats to box seats, and price increases to $2.50 for box seats, $1.75 for reserves, and $1.25 for general admission. The old prices—$2.40, $1.80, and $1.20—were “too slow for ticket sellers to make change from,” explained MacPhail. He pointed out that the stadium had 39,520 low-priced seats, more than all but two other ballparks.

The team sold twenty-five hundred season box seats, and each purchaser got a brass nameplate affixed to their box railing, a practice that delighted the fans who would bribe ushers to sneak down to find themselves in, say,
the Merrill Lynch box. Four hundred box holders signed up for membership in the new Stadium Club restaurant.

The MacPhail touch for promotion was evident when five hundred pairs of nylon stockings were given away at the first Ladies’ Day of the season, and by hiring four barbershop quartets to serenade the fans.

The $250,000 lights on the stadium roof would leave only Fenway without lights in the American League. The six towers contained 1,245 reflectors, each with a 1,500-watt bulb. (Forbes Field in Pittsburgh had 864 reflectors and had been the park with the most.) The Yanks would play fourteen night games in that first illuminated season.

McCarthy found spring training unsettling, even with his stars back. MacPhail, looking to cover his spring costs, booked nine games in Panama against U.S. Army teams, while two simultaneous spring training camps operated in Florida to accommodate the large number of players, one in St. Petersburg and the other, run by coach Johnny Neun, in Bradenton.

The camp included a twenty-one-year-old med student from Tulane University named Bobby Brown, whose father was an old friend of Weiss’s. Brown was a much-heralded shortstop at the time and received a $35,000 bonus to sign with the Yankees. He attended high school in Maplewood, New Jersey, and would go on to play a fine third base for the Yanks while also completing his studies to become a cardiologist. He would return to baseball years later as president of the Texas Rangers and then, in a final act, as president of the American League.

At Newark, he roomed with promising outfielder Larry Berra. One night, while studying his medical text, Berra asked him, “How’d your book come out?” It was an early Yogi-ism.

ON APRIL 30, Bob Feller no-hit the Yankees 1–0, the first time the Yanks had ever been no-hit at Yankee Stadium and the first time they had been nohit anywhere since 1919. Frankie Hayes hit a ninth-inning homer off Floyd “Bill” Bevens to break a 0–0 tie.

The Yankees made their first regular-season flight on May 13. Harold Rosenthal of the
Herald Tribune
was aboard to report a takeoff from LaGuardia Field at 3:15 P.M. and a landing in St. Louis’s Lambert–St. Louis Airport at 6:47 P.M. Four men, leery of flying—Ruffing, Crosetti, Bevens, and Bill Wight—were given permission to take the old-fashioned train.

The Yanks had chartered a DC-4 from Douglas Aircraft, calling it the
Yankee Mainliner.
The rail age was winding down for teams; the camaraderie of the card games in the dining car, the friendships formed between writers and players, would be a thing of the past.

It wasn’t embraced by everyone. In 1947 there was talk that MacPhail would make anyone who went by rail pay for his own ticket, but he backed off and said, “No one on our ball club ever has been told that he must fly.”

Henrich took a leadership role here, befitting his seniority, his likability, and his intelligence. Tommy was an organizer, and whether it was barbershop quartet competitions back home in Massillon, Ohio, bridge tournaments on the trains, or a role in creating a player pension plan, he was never shy. At one point MacPhail wanted to expand the schedule to 168 games. Tommy opposed it and publicly challenged his boss’s position. When it came to flying, he led a vote by the Yankee players with the majority opposing it. The vote was overruled. Eventually, most of the players flew, and those who wanted to use trains would get reimbursed.

Meanwhile, for others discovering the glamour of the early days of passenger travel, the flights added excitement to being a big leaguer. Mel Allen would alert fans to assemble at LaGuardia Field to welcome the team home, and sometimes, if the hour was right, the airport receptions were fantastic, with thousands greeting their heroes.

ON MAY 24, McCarthy’s long run as Yankee manager ended.

McCarthy had gone home from Cleveland four days earlier, citing a flareup of his gall bladder trouble. He had a miserable cold and was generally run-down. He had been short-tempered with Rolfe, with his rookie pitcher Joe Page, with a Detroit cabbie, and even with Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey. He telegraphed MacPhail, “It is with extreme regret that I must request that you accept my resignation as manager of the Yankee Baseball Club, effective immediately. My doctor advises that my health would be seriously jeopardized if I continued. This is the sole reason for my decision which, as you know, is entirely voluntary on my part.” He recommended Dickey as his successor.

MacPhail dispatched George Weiss to Tonawanda to visit with Marse Joe in person. It was an appropriate courtesy and the right gesture for this Yankee legend. But McCarthy had made up his mind.

“The retirement of McCarthy was not without advance warning and it occasioned no real surprise,” wrote Red Smith in the
Herald Tribune.
“Yet it
is going to be difficult to conceive of a Yankee team without him.” As for Dickey, Smith wrote, “All but the first few months of Dickey’s big league career was served under McCarthy, so it is to be expected the Yanks will go on being the same sort of ball team McCarthy had, which is the best and most skillful and most exquisitely polished team that can be built.”

“The McCarthy stamp was indelibly imprinted on his team, his YANKEES,” wrote Arthur Daley. “This grim-visaged man was in a class by himself … you can’t improve on perfection. Joseph Vincent McCarthy was exactly that.”

Dickey, with the team in Boston, became the Yanks’ first player-manager since Bill Donovan had pitched one game in 1916 and the last they’ve had since. Dickey’s last 15 appearances were all as a pinch hitter: He caught his last game on June 12.

The first Yankee home night game was played on May 28 following a rainout the night before. On a chilly evening before 49,917, in what would be Dickey’s home debut as manager, Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall had the distinction of pitching for the Yanks, losing to Washington knuckleballer Dutch Leonard, 2–1. The first pitch was delivered by Charles E. Wilson, president of General Electric, whose engineers had designed the system.

The next day, McCarthy showed up at the stadium to say good-bye to everyone, to assure all that he and MacPhail had never exchanged a “rough” word, and that “I’m still a Yankee and I think the ball club will win with Dickey—no reason why it shouldn’t.”

THE TEAM, MEANWHILE, was underachieving. Stirnweiss fell to .251 and Etten to .232, leading people to label them “wartime” players who couldn’t fare well against the returning first-rate pitching. What was more disheartening was seeing DiMaggio hit .290/25/95, Rizzuto .257, Gordon .210, and Henrich .251. Had they lost it?

Chandler was 20–8, while Bevens won 16. Bevens spent just three full seasons with the Yanks. The big right-hander from Oregon spent seven years in the minors before making it to New York, and then five more after his big-league career, pitching mostly in the Pacific Coast League.

The 1946 season would be Johnny Murphy’s last with the Yanks; he was released after spring training of 1947. Johnny had given the team twelve sterling seasons out of the bullpen and helped bring glamour to the reliever’s role. Murph had also served as the Yankees’ and the American
League’s player representative on matters involving the new pension program being instituted for ten-year major leaguers, based on proceeds from the All-Star Game and radio rights for the World Series.

ALTHOUGH AT DICKEY’S hiring it had been reported that he was engaged “through 1947,” this was apparently not the case. On September 2, according to MacPhail, Bill had “demanded a showdown on just where he stood for 1947. I told Bill the only thing I could tell him was what I told him when he was appointed, that a decision as to the management of the club in 1947 would be made as soon as possible after the close of the present season.”

On September 9, MacPhail hired longtime manager Bucky Harris to serve in an advisory capacity, citing a need to do a better job in scouting their own minor league players for potential trades. MacPhail had visited with Harris in Buffalo in August, where Bucky was serving as general manager of the Bisons, seemingly done as a major league manager after twenty seasons, the last in 1943. “He is not considered for any kind of a job on the field,” said MacPhail. “Bucky will be the contact between myself and the club, doing a job that I have found neither myself nor George Weiss has had time for this year.”

MacPhail later reported that Durocher had sought out Dan Topping in early August to put his hat in the ring for the Yankee job.

On September 11, Dickey asked not to be considered for the managing job in ’47, and two days later he quit and went home to Little Rock. He cited personal reasons, saying only that “I don’t
think
Bucky will manage the Yanks. I don’t know though—he might.”

“I regret exceedingly leaving New York,” he said as he checked out of his Detroit hotel. “I have played only with the Yankees and they will always be my team. I am very grateful to the fans in New York for the way they have treated me through the years. I am sorry my New York association ended just when it did. As Colonel MacPhail said in his statement it is ‘unfortunate,’ but the circumstances made no other action possible on my part.”

With only fourteen games left on the schedule, coach Johnny Neun was named to finish the season (he went 8–6). The Yanks finished third, seventeen games out.

On September 20, the Yankees released Ruffing, the winningest pitcher in their history. He caught on with the White Sox in 1947, pitched nine games for them, and called it a career. Although Whitey Ford later passed
him, his 231 victories remained a record for Yankee right-handers, a record likely to last a very long time. (Ruffing had passed Bob Shawkey in 1939, and thus by 2012 had held the mark for seventy-three years, with no challenger in sight.)

ACCORDING TO MACPHAIL, Harris was off scouting the Brooklyn playoff series with the Cardinals and recommended Durocher for the Yankee job.

Then, MacPhail said, he persuaded Harris to take the managing job on October 23, but held up the announcement as a favor to Leo, who was in negotiations with Brooklyn over a new contract. On October 26, he called Durocher to say he couldn’t hold up on the announcement any longer and would have a press conference on Election Day.

On Election Day, November 5, in the club’s Fifth Avenue office, Harris, fifty, was introduced as the new manager for 1947–48, with Charlie Dressen named as a coach. Both were present.

“When I hired Harris I had no idea of his managing the club,” MacPhail said. “In choosing a manager, I felt a deep responsibility to my two partners, Del Webb and Dan Topping. I did not want to be hurried. I wanted to come up with the best available man. I think Harris is the best available man.”

Wrote Arthur Daley, “Harris is an eminently sound choice, a chap wise in the ways of baseball. The baseball writers will applaud his selection because Bucky is a blunt, outspoken fellow who never equivocates. Nor will he take any nonsense from MacPhail, if that impulsive character ever should try to stick his finger in the pie.”

“MacPhail offered me the Yankee job,” said Durocher.

“Leo was never asked to become the new Yankee manager,” said MacPhail. “But … he sent word to me that he would like to manage the club. I did not tell Leo he could have the job. I did not think he would be the logical man for it.”

Crosetti was made a coach, replacing Rolfe. He’d hold that third-base coaching spot for the next twenty-one seasons.

JOE MCCARTHY TOOK it easy for all of 1947. By ’48, he was ready to work again, and the Red Sox hired him to manage.

He managed Boston for two and half years, and then retired to his “Yankee Farm” in Tonawanda, where he lived until his death. He was elected to the
Hall of Fame in 1957. In planning the remodeled Yankee Stadium in the mid-seventies, it was decided to erect a plaque for Casey Stengel, who had died in ’75. “Order one for McCarthy too,” Gabe Paul told me. “Let him know about it and enjoy it while he’s alive.”

I called McCarthy and invited him to the unveiling, but he wasn’t up to the trip. So I asked him to record a thank-you greeting for the fans, which went over nicely when we played it on the stadium’s PA system on April 21, 1976. He died January 13, 1978, at ninety.

BUCKY HARRIS HAD MANAGED four teams, having been the “Boy Manager” in Washington, leading them to the World Series in 1924 and 1925 while still playing second base. But his managing career had seemed to run out of gas after ’43 in Philadelphia. He was still just fifty years old, but his career went back to 1916 and it seemed to some as if he had run out the course. Now he reemerged with the best job in baseball. And it was going to get better.