Pinstripe Empire (44 page)

JUST AS SPRING training was arriving in February 1948, Weiss sprung a brilliant deal with the White Sox, sending Aaron Robinson, Bill Wight, and Fred Bradley to Chicago in exchange for the southpaw Eddie Lopat.

Edmund Lopatynski, 50–49 during four seasons in Chicago, was not a hard thrower, and it took a keen judge of talent to see past that and see that he knew how to win ballgames. Some called him a “junkball” pitcher, but that shortchanged his ability to mix up pitches and throw nasty breaking balls. “He didn’t have much of a fastball,” said Berra, “but he had good movement on it.”

Lopat had an easygoing personality that seemed to match his tantalizing slow curves. He was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, grew up at Ninety-eighth and Madison, and went to DeWitt Clinton High, which had no baseball team. Stickball in the New York streets was his game. Now, at thirty, he was hardly a star, but he was about to become part of Reynolds-Raschi-Lopat, as good a three-man rotation as the team had ever enjoyed. And in ’48, their first year together, the trio each started 31 games and had a 52–26 record. By the time they had their final year together in 1953, they
had a 307–143 record, a .682 won-lost percentage, and five world championship rings. And no finer examples of professionalism ever wore the Yankee uniform. They were always ready to take the ball, always ready to reward the fans with a top effort.

ON MAY 24, the Yankees announced plans to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Yankee Stadium by making it their Old-Timers’ Day theme, at which time they would also retire Babe Ruth’s number 3. Only Gehrig’s 4 and Carl Hubbell’s number 11 on the Giants had been retired at this point, although many found it odd that players like Bud Metheny, Eddie Bockman, Hal Peck, Roy Weatherly, Allie Clark, Frank Colman, and Cliff Mapes had succeeded Selkirk in wearing number 3, rather than having it put out of circulation long before.

Mapes would happily yield the number and become the second Yankee to wear the “unlucky” 13, because, as Pete Sheehy told me years later, “ ‘Clifford Mapes’ was thirteen letters long.” (Mapes was also the last to wear number 7 before Mickey Mantle, having abandoned 13.)

Those close to Babe Ruth knew that he was in his final months. He looked just awful, his weight had fallen dramatically, and his public appearances were few. He cooperated as well as he could with radio personality Bob Considine on an autobiography that would become the first baseball book to ever make the
New York Times
bestseller list. (In keeping with his reputation, when Considine asked him to sign a copy for him personally at the book party, Ruth had to say, “What’s your name again?”)

On Saturday, June 12, after losing a doubleheader to the Indians, a party was held on the eve of Old-Timers’ Day at the Ruppert Brewery, hosted by George Ruppert. The next day, as many members of the ’23 team as could travel returned to New York. Still relatively young men in their fifties, they included Hoyt, Pipgras, Bush, Pipp, Meusel, Schang, Jones, Mays, and Witt. Ed Barrow was on the field with Arthur Huggins, Miller’s brother. They squared off for two innings against latter-day “old-timers” including Zachary, Koenig, Selkirk, Collins, Sewell, Powell, Rolfe, Hadley, Hoag, Allen, Moore, Chandler, Borowy, Bonham, and the Indians’ active player Joe Gordon. “Once a Yankee, always a Yankee,” said Hoyt.

It was a miserable, drizzly day, but Ruth gave it his all. He dressed at his old metal locker at an “auxiliary” locker room apart from the new Yankee clubhouse. With the help of a male nurse and another aide, he managed to
put on a Yankee uniform for one last time. The photographers had full access to him, and no one thought to protect him from the prying lenses.

Babe was to come from the third-base dugout. He took a Bob Feller bat for support, dropped his overcoat, and walked onto the field as he was introduced. More than forty-nine thousand chilled fans stood and cheered what would be his final appearance in Yankee Stadium.

The principal photographer that day was David Blumenthal, the Yankees’ “official” photographer for special occasions. Nat Fein of the
Herald Tribune
was filling in for the paper’s regular sports photographer and chose to position himself behind the third-base line so that he could shoot the Babe from the back. Ruth wore number 3 for only six of his seasons, and he never wore the NY that was on the front, but still, this was the Babe in full dress, the way fans wanted to see him. His dark hair appeared to be dyed.

Fein, using a Speed Graphic camera and working with available light and no flash, went to work. As twenty Yankee pennants hung over the facade, and with tears running down most everyone’s cheeks, the Babe was saying good-bye. Fein shot one of the most famous sports photographs in history.

Babe made his way to the microphone and said in a barely audible voice, “I am proud I hit the first home run here. God knows who will hit the last one. It is great to see the men from twenty-five years ago back here today and it makes me feel proud to be with them.”

(The Lord, if he is truly all-knowing, must have observed then that it would be Duke Sims hitting the last one in 1973, and that Jose Molina would do the honors in the remodeled stadium in 2008.)

Will Harridge went to the mike and said, “As president of the American League, I declare Yankee uniform number three retired. It never will be worn again in this stadium, or on the road.”

Back in the clubhouse, Babe saw his pal Joe Dugan and said, “Joe, I’m gone.”

ELEVEN DAYS AFTER Old-Timers’ Day, Babe checked into Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. His cancer had spread and the end was near. A film based on his life was produced in Hollywood with William Bendix as Ruth, a terrible casting choice and by all measures an artistic failure. The movie premiered at the Astor Theater on Broadway and Forty-eighth Street on July 26, with Ruth in attendance, having left the hospital for the evening. The movie’s official release date was to be September 6, but given Babe’s health,
the premiere was rushed so that he could attend. But he was unable, or couldn’t bear, to stay for the complete screening.

He died in the hospital at 8:01 P.M. on August 16, 1948. He was only fifty-three years old.

The Yankees made arrangements to have his body lie in state inside gate 4, behind home plate, surrounded by floral offerings. There his fans could view him one last time. For two days and two nights, between 75,000 and 100,000 people turned out and filed by respectfully. Nothing like this had ever taken place in a ballpark. Fathers brought small children so they could say that they saw him.

The funeral was held on August 19 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the burial was at Gate of Heaven cemetery in Hawthorne, Westchester County.

“No game will ever see his like, his equal again,” wrote Grantland Rice. “He was one in many, many lifetimes. One all alone.”

“Ruth possessed a magnetism that was positively infectious,” wrote Hoyt. “When he entered a clubhouse or a room, or when he appeared on a field—it was as if he was a whole parade. There seemed to be flags waving, bands playing constantly.”

A nation’s flags would be at half staff in the summer of ’48 for the greatest baseball hero ever. The Yankee players wore wide black armbands.

A Ruth monument would join Huggins’s and Gehrig’s in the outfield on April 19, 1949. In June of ’49, the metal lockers of Ruth and Gehrig were presented to the Hall of Fame in a pregame ceremony at home plate. A year after his death, Babe Ruth Plaza was dedicated on a median along 161st Street between Ruppert Place and Gerard Avenue. The full team, in uniform, walked outside to the area for the dedication, which was marked by four diamond-shaped designations above bronze posts.

Ruth remained the supreme Yankee icon even as decades passed. Had he lived to be one hundred, he would have seen the arrivals of Jeter, Rivera, Williams, Pettitte, and Posada into the organization. Imagine the hand he would have received each year at Old-Timers’ Day.

ON THE DAY Ruth died, the Yankees were in an unaccustomed fourth place. A seven-game winning streak immediately after and a nine-game winning streak surrounding Labor Day moved them to contention. They tied for first on September 24 with just seven games remaining, but they would win only three of those games. On Saturday, October 2, in the next-to-last game
of the season, Jack Kramer of the Red Sox beat Tommy Byrne 5–1 at Fenway Park, and it was over. It was a 94-win season but a third-place finish, in contention until the final twenty-four hours.

This would prove to be a bigger miss than just losing a pennant race. Had they found a way to win in ’48, they might have won seven straight world championships. And Bucky Harris might have managed all of them and been thought of as one of the greatest managers in history.

While DiMaggio had his best postwar season—.320/39/155—and while Berra, Henrich (who hit four grand slams), Lindell, and Brown also hit .300, the decline of Joe Page from his magical ’47 season was thought by most to be the big reason for the drop-off. Page was 7–8 with a 4.26 ERA and had only 16 saves. And while he almost approached DiMaggio in popularity with the fans, his teammates began to turn from him, put off by his playing the role of DiMaggio’s shadow, always seen running after Joe.

“Page was so dependent upon DiMag he wouldn’t leave a hotel for a plane or train without the Jolter,” wrote Milton Gross. “When bags were being unloaded from a plane, while the Yankees waited in their bus, Page would wait outside, not only for his bag but for Joe’s as well, although DiMag was embarrassed by this attention.”

TWO DAYS AFTER the season, Harris was dropped as manager. Berra and other players heard that a rift had developed with Weiss, oddly, over Harris’s refusal to provide his home telephone number for Weiss. Because September rumors of a rift between Harris and his boss had also led to speculation about either DiMaggio or Henrich succeeding him, the Yankees’ statement on the matter concluded, “Several candidates, not including any player active with the Yankees in 1948, are being considered for the post.”

Harris’s career wasn’t over yet; he’d manage the Senators (for the third time) from 1950–54 and the Tigers (for the second time) in 1955–56. He certainly had nothing to be ashamed about for his two-year Yankee stint: a .620 winning percentage and a world championship. But he was bitter, being dropped after a world championship and such a narrow miss in ’48.

THERE BEING FEW opportunities for left-handed dentists, Charles Dillon Stengel, nicknamed “Casey” for his hometown of Kansas City—K.C.—dropped out of dental school and began his baseball career in 1910. He batted
.284 in fourteen journeyman seasons as a semiregular outfielder with five of the eight National League teams.

As a manager, he had five minor league stops, including Worcester of the Eastern League in 1925. That was where he got to know Weiss, who operated New Haven. At thirty-four he led Brooklyn, and then went to Boston for a total of nine NL seasons, every one of them in the second division, and only one of them (77–75) over .500. At both stops he’d been paid to not manage in the final year of his contract. He was now fifty-eight years old but wrinkled and bowlegged and used antiquated and politically incorrect expressions; one could easily take him for seventy-eight. It was hard to imagine him drawing much respect from the old-line McCarthy guys like DiMaggio, Henrich, Keller, and Rizzuto. In fact, those players would find the adjustment difficult and would always cite McCarthy as the best they ever played for. Stengel briefly put DiMaggio at first base one day, embarrassing the legend who had no practice time there. It was an example of the disconnect between him and the old guard.

So what was this career National Leaguer, this failed manager and ordinary player, this fellow with a reputation as a bit of a clown (once letting a bird fly out from under his cap), going to be doing in a Yankee uniform?

Arthur Daley, writing in the
Times
, said, “The hiring of the tremendously popular Casey is a smart move because it takes some of the heat off the firing of the tremendously popular Harris. It’s going to take a long time before the boys in the press box stop seething about the summary departure of Bucky.”

Weiss was high on Stengel as he watched him take Oakland to the PCL pennant. He had Devine and Essick scout the Oaks for whatever they might learn of Stengel, and they came back with a favorable report. Topping was a bit wary, not aided at all by Casey calling him “Bob” at his 21 Club introductory press conference, but Webb, who usually didn’t play much of a role in such decisions, signed on early as a Stengel supporter and years later told people, “My sole contribution to the Yankees was signing Casey Stengel as manager.” He recounted observing Casey holding court in a hotel lobby, talking baseball with anyone who cared, and thinking, “If he cared that much about baseball he must be a terrific manager.”

His support helped to bring Topping around.

BILL DICKEY RETURNED TO THE Yankees as a coach in 1949 and immediately set about making Berra a better catcher. Yogi had already impressed everyone with his bat, his ability to hit bad pitches and make contact. But his defensive game needed work, and Dickey proved to be a terrific instructor. Yogi would ultimately set records for consecutive errorless games (148) and chances (950), apart from most homers by a catcher (313, later broken by Johnny Bench).

Yogi and Casey understood each other and went to battle together. Casey trusted his pitch calling, as did the great pitching staff, and although Yogi was still only twenty-four, he was a team leader, a presence. He came to be considered Casey’s “assistant manager.”

As a rookie he had once failed to run hard on a ground ball. “Hey, we’re all hustling here, how about you?” Keller said. It never happened again. The Yankees policed each other and protected their brand.

And this core of players, about to learn Casey’s ways, would go on to win five consecutive world championships.

It hadn’t happened before, and it hasn’t happened since.

Twelve of the ’49 Yankees would be on the roster for all five seasons: Rizzuto, Berra, Raschi, Reynolds, Lopat, Brown, Hank Bauer, Gene Woodling, Charlie Silvera, Johnny Mize, Joe Collins, and Jerry Coleman. (Also worth noting: Batboy Joe Carrieri was there from 1949–55, and later the author of a remembrance of his time.)