As it turned out, Rickey did me a favor sending me to Rochester. I had seven great years there, the last three as manager, and got to play second base every single day. In 1929 I successfully accepted 1,064 chances, still a record for second basemen in any league. We made 223 double plays that year, also a record. We won the International League pennant four years in a row—1928 through 1931—and in two of those years—1929 and 1930—I was named the league’s Most Valuable Player.
After managing Rochester from 1932 through 1934, I got into a financial dispute with Mr. Rickey and left the Cardinal organization. I managed elsewhere in the minors for the rest of the thirties and the early forties, and then became farm director for the Boston Red Sox in 1943. I was still holding down that job in 1948 when I had my first serious eye trouble.
I don’t know what caused it, but one day I was working in my office at Fenway Park in Boston and I got dots in front of my eyes and couldn’t see very well. I went across the hall to Eddie Collins, who was general manager of the Red Sox then, and asked him if he knew a good eye doctor. Eddie sent me to a Boston specialist, who examined me at great length and finally told me that I had a detached retina in my left eye. I had to have an operation immediately to re-attach the retina, although he thought the chances were only fifty-fifty the sight in that eye could be saved.
There were two doctors in New York who specialized in such operations, so I contacted one immediately and the operation was scheduled for a couple of days later at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. This doctor was of the opinion that after the operation you should lie on your back without moving your head for thirty days, to make sure the retina wasn’t jarred loose again. The other doctor had patients on their feet in a week or so, but my doctor was much more conservative.
The operation took place in February of 1948, and I lay on my back in my hospital bed, my eye bandaged, not moving my head, for a month afterwards. I wasn’t allowed out of bed for any reason, and to make sure I didn’t turn on my side at night, they placed the equivalent of sandbags alongside me so I couldn’t even turn my head. After thirty days the doctor removed the bandages and we discovered, unfortunately, that the operation had been a failure. I had become totally blind in my left eye.
The doctor recommended that we try again, so after a couple of days on my feet I was wheeled back into the operating room and did it all over again. I lay there on my back, sandbagged in, my head still, my eyes bandaged, for another thirty days. When he finally removed the bandages, nothing had changed. The second operation was a failure, too.
Now I’m blind in one eye. “How about the other one?” I asked the doctor.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t think you’re likely to have any problems. Don’t strain it too much and things will probably be all right.”
So I went back to work and tried not to worry about it too much. In 1951, however, my other eye developed the same problem. I returned to the same doctor at Columbia Presbyterian, this time for an operation on my right eye. After all, he was a highly respected eye surgeon with an outstanding reputation. It was the same routine again. Confined to bed for thirty days after the operation, on my back the whole time, not moving my head, my eye bandaged, waiting for the verdict.
This was a lot more frightening than 1948, though, because this time, as I lay on my back, I couldn’t see anything at all. My left eye was blind and my right eye was bandaged. For the first time, I started thinking about what life would be like if I could never see again. As I lay there, I often daydreamed about the games I’d seen right in that very location many years ago, when the Yankees—or rather the Highlanders, as they used to be called—played in their old Hilltop Park on that exact site. I replayed those games over and over in my mind’s eye, and once again saw Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson and Joe Wood as vividly as though forty years hadn’t intervened. Naturally, I wondered whether I’d ever get to see another baseball game again.
With those fears to keep me company, thirty days on my back took a lot longer to pass than they had in 1948. Seemed more like a year than a month. While I was lying there, by the way, I heard Bobby Thomson hit his historic home run off Ralph Branca and heard the Yankees beat the Giants in the World Series a few days later. Anyway, the operation was a failure. We tried two more times, both of which were also failures. All in all, I lay in that same position for three solid months, all to no avail. After the third try—which was my fifth operation altogether, counting both eyes—it finally sunk in that I’d never see again.
It took a while for me to adjust to that reality. But I never believed in feeling sorry for myself, and I tried to make the best of it. I became a writer and a public speaker and have pursued those vocations ever since I lost my sight, which is now over thirty years ago. I’ve written two books and lots of magazine articles and spoken hundreds of times, usually before high-school audiences.
Mabel and George Toporcer on their 25th wedding anniversary in 1947
Of course, I never could have done it without my wife, Mabel. We’ve been married for more than sixty years now, sixty wonderful years, and for the past three decades she’s been my eyes as well as my companion. Obviously, any success I’ve had is due largely to her.
The theme that I emphasize in a lot of my writing and public speaking is that the ballplayers of today are better than the ballplayers of yesterday. This shocks a lot of people, who expect me to say just the opposite. They’re so used to hearing old-timers like me talk about how today’s ballplayers can’t hold a candle to yesterday’s that they only half listen. Then when I say that baseball players are better than ever, they almost swallow their teeth!
Old-timers often get quite upset when they hear that. They say, “What does that old geezer know, anyway? He hasn’t even seen a game in thirty years.”
Well, in a sense they’re right, of course. It’s true that I haven’t seen a game since 1951. But I listen to games on the radio all the time—mostly the Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox. Many’s the day I listen to two games, sometimes three. And I read a lot. I was always a big reader all my life, and now I read more than ever. That is, Mabel reads to me. I may have lost my sight, but I still have Mabel and a brain and I can think, can’t I?
I spend a lot of time thinking about baseball in the “good old days” and baseball today. I love the good old days. They were great: Coogan’s Bluff…Hilltop Park…Mathewson…my idol, George Burns. But let’s face reality. Baseball was in its infancy then. Today athletes are bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than they used to be. Everybody admits it in football, basketball, and track. What makes baseball so different?
21 Lefty O’Doul
How dear to my heart was the old-fashioned batter
Who scattered line drives from the spring to the fall.
He did not resemble the up-to-date batter
Who swings from his heels and then misses the ball.
The up-to-date batter I’m not very strong for;
He shatters the ozone with all of his might.
And that is the reason I hanker and long for
Those who doubled to left, and tripled to right.
The old-fashioned batter,
The eagle-eyed batter,
The thinking-man’s batter,
Who tripled to right.
—GEORGE E. PHAIR
I PLAYED FOR A LOT OF MANAGERS in my day. Miller Huggins, Frank Chance, John McGraw, Miss Rosie Stultz. Most successful of all was Rosie Stultz. She was our seventh-grade teacher at Bay View Grammar School, and she managed the school team. Won the grade-school championship of San Francisco in 1912, we did, with Miss Rosie Stultz managing.
A manager can only do so much, you know that. The rest is up to the players. It’s the players make the manager, not the other way around. I managed for 24 years myself, in the Pacific Coast League. In 1935 I had Joe DiMaggio in right field and won the pennant. He hit .398. Sold him to the Yankees over the winter, and the next year I finished next to last.
Take Frank
Chance. One of the greatest, right? Won all those pennants with the Cubs. He was my manager on the Red Sox in 1923. Well, in 1923 we ended dead last. Just proves if you haven’t got the horses you haven’t got a Chance!
I signed my first professional contract with San Francisco in 1917, and they farmed me out to Des Moines in the Western League. Des Moines in the Western League in 1917. What a life! You’d get on a coal-burning train with the old wicker seats, carrying your own uniform and your own bats and everything, and ride from Des Moines, Iowa, to Wichita, Kansas. All night and part of the next day. If you opened the window you’d be eating soot and cinders all night long. If you closed the window you’d roast to death. Get off in the morning either filthy or without a wink of sleep. Usually both.
Frank Chance, the Peerless Leader
In the Pacific Coast League, later on, I used to play Sunday morning at Stockton, grab an egg sandwich, ride 60 or 70 miles on the bus, put the wet uniform back on, and play an afternoon game in Sacramento. Play in Oakland on a Sunday morning, wolf down a bean sandwich and rush over on the ferry boat, carrying your own equipment, to play an afternoon game in San Francisco. Same clammy uniform again. That wasn’t semipro ball. That was professional baseball. The San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League. And you know what? I loved every minute of it.
I was a pitcher at first. Spent seven years at it, but never got very far. Was up with the Yankees and the Red Sox, but hurt my arm and never did much. In 1924 the Red Sox sold me to Salt Lake City, and you know the high altitude there. Cripes, you could hit a ball with one hand and it would fly out of the park.
So I said to the manager, “I am now an outfielder.”
“You don’t know how to play the outfield,” he says.
“Well,” I said, “I’ll learn.”
And you know the rest of it. I played the outfield that year and led the Coast League in hitting with .392. Hit .398 with the Phillies five years later, closest any man ever came to hitting .400 in the Big Leagues without making it. Only eight fellows in the history of baseball ever hit .400
Eleven years in the Big Leagues and a lifetime batting average of .349. That’s lifetime average, .349. Only guys ever did better are Cobb, Hornsby, and Joe Jackson. So you might say I have the highest batting average of any man living. Yeah—rest of the guys are dead.
So that’s it. Story of my life. Think we could make a movie of that? Well, maybe not. Too many things happened on the sidelines we couldn’t put in. Right?
If I had it to do all over I’d be a ballplayer again without pay. Yeah, without pay. I loved it. That’s why I never squawked when I didn’t get big salaries. I liked to play too much.
Of course, if I were playing now and they gave some kid one of those big bonuses to sign a contract, why I’d be kind of disappointed in the whole setup. I led the National League in batting in 1929 with a .398 average, got 254 hits that season—still the record—and I got a $500 raise. That’s right, $500.
Was I making about $20,000 then? Are you kidding? I was lucky to get as much as eight. In 1932 I led the National League in hitting again, with .368, and they cut me a thousand dollars. That’s the truth!
How can they give these kids, without knowing what’s inside their bodies, what kind of heart they have, what kind of intestinal fortitude, give them $100,000 to sign a contract? I can’t understand it. Imagine if the Bank of America here would go to say Stanford University, and give the honor student there $100,000. And tell him that some day he’ll be one of the big shots in the bank. Same idea. They wouldn’t dare do that, would they?
When a man proves himself, has shown that he’s a Big Leaguer, why I think those are the fellows should get the dough. Not some youngster who doesn’t know his way into the ball park yet. I can’t understand it. It doesn’t help morale on a ball club, I’ll tell you that.
Of course, a lot of things are different today. When I was playing, it was an unwritten law that if a batter ever hit a pitch when the count was three balls and no strikes, the next time he came up there, boy, he was knocked down four consecutive times. They’re always yelling about the “bean ball” nowadays. Be better off if they forgot about it. Hell, they’ve got an iron helmet on their head, haven’t they? They look like steel workers. If I was pitching today I’d see if I couldn’t skip a few off their noggins.
We didn’t wear an iron helmet. We wore a felt hat. I saw many a ball coming right at my head. When I pitched for San Francisco in 1921 I hit 19 men. On purpose. No way to say how many I missed! Then when I became an outfielder the shoe was on the other foot. Shoe was on the other foot, see? They hit me in the legs, hit me in the back, broke my elbow, broke my rib. That’s all right. Let the ballplayers fight themselves out of it. Drag the ball and spike the pitcher.
Why are the general managers and the managers always hollering about bean balls? They don’t have to go up there and hit, do they? What are they screaming about? And the umpires, going out and warning a pitcher about throwing bean balls. Fining him. How does the umpire know? The ball could have slipped, couldn’t it? A pitcher is a human being. Not a lathe. Not a piece of machinery. The ball could slip, right?
When I hit .398 they were knocking me down all day long. The catchers used to say, “Well, here you go, Frank,” and I’d duck. Nobody interfered. They left us alone. We worked our way out of it by ourselves.
When I was playing ball in the Big Leagues my bats would be jumping up and down in the trunk. Couldn’t wait to get to the ball park and grab that bat. Big crowd, sock a triple, nothing like it! Maybe I was a ham. What’s the use of doing something when nobody’s looking? But a packed ball park, crowd roaring, the guy throws you a great breaking curve, you hit it on the nose and drive it over the outfielder’s head. What a thrill!
I marvel at how some of those guys used to hit the ball, back when I first started. The pitchers would use dirt and tobacco juice and licorice and make the ball as black as your hat. Why, just imagine Ty Cobb, hitting the emery ball, the shine ball, the spitball, the coffee ball–they used to chew coffee beans and spit it in the seams—just imagine him hitting .367 lifetime for more than 20 years.
I was at a dinner a few years ago, about 1960, and Leo Durocher spoke about the great Willie Mays and all. After he was finished I got up and said that evidently Mr. Durocher never saw Mr. Cobb or Mr. Ruth or several others, like Mr. Joe Jackson or Mr. Harry Heilmann, saying that Mays was the greatest baseball player who ever lived. He’s a great fielder and he can run the bases pretty good, but he couldn’t carry the bat of many a player. Not a chance. And I talked about Cobb hitting all those pitches, .367 lifetime.
Mr. and Mrs. Babe Ruth and daughter Dorothy in 1921.
After I’d finished, one of the kids in the audience asked me, “What do you think Cobb would hit today, with this white ball and all?”
“Oh,” I said, “about the same as Mays, maybe .340, something like that.”
“Then why do you say Cobb was so great,” the kid says to me, “if he could only hit .340 or so with this lively ball?”
“Well,” I said, “you have to take into consideration the man is now seventy-three years old!”
Nowadays the ballplayers don’t want to talk baseball. They think the old-timer is living in the past. They’d rather talk about stocks, bonds, real estate, their commercials. They don’t care to discuss baseball.
Of course, when I was playing there wasn’t much else to do. Wasn’t any television or any of that malarky. We’d sit around hotel lobbies and talk baseball. In St. Louis there was a fountain at the old Buckingham Hotel, and on hot nights we’d sit around that fountain and talk about how to beat the guys the next day. Talked baseball all day and night. So if we did that, you know it must have been better baseball. Had to be.
St. Louis, boy did it ever get hot there. Jeez, you’d roast out on that field, and the nights were just as bad. Try to sleep and before you knew it you were lying in a pool of water. Get up in the morning and grope your way out to the
ball park. Now everything’s air conditioned. They’re even air-conditioning the stadiums. What next?
Yes, that’s true, I started professional baseball in Japan. How did that happen? Well, see, years ago—I think it was 1931—I went to Japan on an American All-Star team. Interesting country, interesting people. I liked them, and they liked me. So the next year I went back and coached at the Six Universities. I kept going back and finally went to work organizing a professional setup, like we have here. I’m the one who named the Tokyo Giants. I was on the New York Giants at the time.
See, I like people who you’re not wasting your time trying to help. Teaching Americans and teaching Japanese is just like the difference between night and day. The American kid, he knows more than the coach. But not the Japanese kid. They want to learn. They don’t think they know everything. Entirely opposite psychology.
Take when we blow an automobile horn. We want the pedestrian to get out of the way, right? Horn blows: Get out of the way. We’re coming through. Honk, honk: Get out of the way. Well, when they blow the horn they’re telling the pedestrian it’s OK: we see you. Horn blows: We see you. Honk, honk: We see you. So when the horn blows they don’t jump or anything. They know they won’t get hit. The driver’s told them he sees them. Get it? Just the opposite from us.
Lefty O’Doul
Jesus, so many of my friends in Japan got killed in the war. So many. Awful. Right after the war I went back. I wanted to, because I knew if we brought a baseball team over there it would help cement friendship between them and us.
When I arrived it was terrible. The people were so depressed. When I had been in Japan before the war their cry had been “Banzai, Banzai.” But when I got there this time they were so depressed that when I hollered “Banzai” they didn’t respond at all. No reaction at all. Nothing. But when I left there, a few months later, all Japan was cheering and shouting “Banzai” again!
The Glory of Their Times Page 27