The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  Ralph Kiner: “He learned the strike zone and instead of hitting 35 home runs, he hit over 50 twice and led the league seven straight years.”

  You have to realize that I lost four and a half seasons to World War II and another year because of that broken wrist in 1936. So I actually played only nine and a half years. During that time I hit 331 home runs and drove in 1,276 runs, which averages out at 35 home runs and 134 runs batted in a season. All together, I played in almost 1,400 games and batted in close to 1,300 runs, nearly one a game; the only one in baseball history who ever did as well driving runs across the plate is Lou Gehrig.

  After I finished playing, I had a whole second career on the management level. I met Bill Veeck at the 1947 World Series, found a kindred spirit, and joined him in the Cleveland Indians’ front office in 1948. In my opinion, Bill Veeck is the smartest and most innovative baseball executive of all time. Except for Branch Rickey, he doesn’t even have any competition.

  Veeck converted me. I was a ballplayer, you see, and the game was everything. What happened aside from the game was irrelevant to me. Bill taught me that baseball was more than just balls and strikes, hits and errors. You have to get people into the ball park, and to do that you have to attract them with a good time as well as a good team. I finally recognized that baseball is part entertainment and show business. I think that Veeck’s genius of drawing more than two and a half million fans in Cleveland in 1948, a town that typically drew less than a million, was as big an accomplishment in its own way as Ted Williams hitting .406.

  First I was farm director and then general manager at Cleveland, and afterwards vice-president of the White Sox when Veeck took over that club. I was part owner of each franchise as well, I guess one of the few who went from the sandlots through the players’ ranks to the front office and eventually an ownership position.

  When Veeck became ill and had to sell the White Sox in 1961, I had an opportunity to increase my stock ownership and acquire a majority interest in the club. After a lot of thought, I finally decided against it. What tipped the scales against buying was the other owners: I recognized then that there was a lot of prejudice against me. I’d have had my life savings tied up in the club, and I realized that if I ever needed any help, I sure wouldn’t get it from my fellow owners. It would be closed ranks against me.

  Strangely enough, that was the first time anti-Semitism really affected me adversely in baseball. As a player, I often had fans and opposing players taunting me, calling me names. For at least ten years I hardly played in a ball park where there wasn’t some loud-mouthed fan popping off with anti-Jewish remarks. In the minors—the Piedmont League, the Texas League—and for many years in the majors, too, my religion was seen as an appropriate topic for ridicule.

  However, I think that helped me more than it hurt. I was a very sensitive, fired-up ballplayer, and when they got on me that way, it brought out the best in me. I played all the harder.

  In my mind, by the way, players belong in a different category than fans. It was considered fair game to try to probe for a guy’s weak spot so you could catch his attention and destroy his concentration. Joe McCarthy used to have two third-stringers on the Yankee bench—we called them bench jockeys—whose main job was to ride the opposition and try to get their goat.

  When opposing bench jockeys taunted me, was it really anti-Semitism or just a psychological ploy to distract me? Probably some of both, but in my opinion it was mostly a psychological ploy. After all, Al Simmons heard similar insults about his Polish ancestry and Joe DiMaggio about his Italian heritage. Babe Ruth was called a “big baboon,” and much worse, and Zeke Bonura “banana nose.” In all honesty, I couldn’t then and I can’t now single out the insults aimed at me as any different from all the others. I think they were all the same kind of thing.

  You want to talk about real bigotry, that was what Jackie Robinson had to contend with in 1947. Teammates asking to be traded rather than play with him, opponents threatening to strike rather than play against him; in many places he couldn’t eat or sleep with the rest of the team. I never encountered anything like that.

  I was with Pittsburgh in the National League that year, so I saw it close up. Brooklyn was leading the league and we were in last place, they were beating our brains out, and here’s some of our guys having a good time yelling insults at Jackie! I had to put up with little more than a mild hazing compared with what he went through.

  Sometimes it could get pretty bad for me too, of course. The Chicago Cubs were especially vicious in the 1935 World Series. They got on me from the first pitch with some really rough stuff. George Moriarty was umpiring behind home plate, and it bothered him so much he went over to quiet them down. They told Moriarty to mind his own business: they weren’t getting on him, they were getting on me. I broke my wrist in the second game of the Series and couldn’t play anymore, so that ended that. They had a rough crew, but we had the last laugh: we won the Series.

  Jackie Robinson

  I realize now, more than I used to, how important a part I played in the lives of a generation of Jewish kids who grew up in the thirties. I never thought about it then. But in recent years, men I meet often tell me how much I meant to them when they were growing up. It’s almost the first thing a lot of them say to me. It still surprises me to hear it, but I think I’m finally starting to believe it.

  They all remember that I didn’t play on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday. They remember it as every year, but in fact the situation arose only once, in 1934. Both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur came in September that year, and since we were in the thick of the pennant race, the first for Detroit in many years, it became a national issue whether or not I should play on those days. The press made a big thing out of it.

  The question was put before Detroit’s leading rabbi, Rabbi Leo Franklin. He consulted the Talmud, a basic source for Jewish morality, and announced that I could play on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, because that was a happy occasion on which Jews used to play ball in the streets long ago. However, I could not play on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because that day should be spent in prayer.

  So I played on Rosh Hashanah and, believe it or not, I hit two home runs off Boston’s Dusty Rhodes. We beat the Red Sox, 2–1, with my second homer winning the game in the tenth inning. Just like in the movies, right?

  Edgar A. Guest, whose poems used to be nationally syndicated, wrote a poem at about that time which he called “Speaking of Greenberg.” I think I still have a copy around here someplace.

  It’s a strange thing. When I was playing, I used to resent being singled out as a Jewish ballplayer. I wanted to be known as a great ballplayer, period. I’m not sure why or when I changed, because I’m still not a particularly religious person. Lately, though, I find myself wanting to be remembered not only as a great ballplayer, but even more as a great Jewish ballplayer.

  Probably Bill Veeck’s fault, right? After all, he’s the one started me thinking maybe there are other things in life besides balls and strikes. Back in good old Crotona Park, I never would have believed a word of it!

  Hank Greenberg

  26 Paul Waner

  The year 1903 began auspiciously for the growing young game of baseball. The two-year feud between the established National League and the infant American League came to an end in January, and the upcoming season promised to be the best yet.

  The idols of the day were Honus Wagner and Napoleon Lajoie, Cy Young and Ed Delahanty. The season before, in the new American League, Cy Young had won 32 games for the Boston Pilgrims and Big Ed Delahanty had led both leagues in batting. Over in the National League, Honus Wagner had led the league in doubles, Sam Crawford in triples, and the pacesetter in home runs—with six—had been Pittsburgh’s Wee Tommy Leach.

  And on April 16, practically opening day of the 1903 season, a son was born to the Waner family at their ranch near Harrah, Oklahoma. He was named Paul Glee. Two years and eleven months later, to the day, he was joined by
brother Lloyd James. To become better known as Big Poison and Little Poison a little over two decades later, their very names were, in the clichés of the sports pages, sufficient to strike terror into the hearts of opposing pitchers.

  Seldom have such clichés been more accurate. The Waner boys played in the Big Leagues for almost 20 years, 14 of them side by side in the Pittsburgh outfield. After it was all over, Paul had amassed the astounding total of over 3,100 hits, a figure exceeded by very few men in the entire history of baseball. Only eight men in history managed to better his output of doubles, and only nine were able to hit more triples. Yet Paul Waner stood only 5 feet 8 inches tall, and weighed less than 150 pounds.

  For his part, Lloyd, who was even smaller, accumulated 2,500 hits and still holds the National League record for the most one-base hits in a season.

  Simply put, the two Waners are far and away the best hitting brothers who ever played in the Big Leagues. Their 5,600 major league hits exceeds by almost 1,000 the total collected by all five Delahanty brothers, and is over 500 more than the total hits of all three DiMaggio brothers.

  I COME FROM A LITTLE TOWN right outside of Oklahoma City, a town by the name of Harrah. You can spell that backwards or forwards. From there I went to State Teachers’ College at Ada. And you can spell that backwards or forwards, too. Which just naturally explains why I’ve always been a fuddle-dee-dud!

  I went to State Teachers’ College at Ada for three years, although I didn’t really intend to be a teacher. Maybe for a little while, but not forever. What I wanted to be was a lawyer, and I figured sooner or later I’d go to law school. Eventually I was going to go to Harvard Law School, I reckon. That was my ambition, anyway.

  But all at once baseball came up, and that changed everything all around. Of course, I was playing ball on amateur and semipro teams all the while I was in high school and college. In those days, you know, every town that had a thousand people in it had a baseball team. That’s not true any more. But in those days there were so many teams along there in the Middle States, and so few scouts, that the chances of a good player being “discovered” and getting a chance to go into organized ball were one in a million. Good young players were a dime a dozen all over the country then.

  How did they find me? Well, they found me because a scout went on a drunk. Yes, that’s right, because a scout went on a bender. He was a scout for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and he was in Muskogee looking over a player by the name of Flaskamper that Frisco wanted to buy. He looked him over, and sent in a recommendation—that was late in the summer of 1922—and then he went out on a drunk for about ten days. They never heard a thing from him all this while, didn’t know anything about him or where the heck he was.

  He finally got in shape to go back to the Coast, but on the way back a train conductor by the name of Burns—you know how they used to stop and talk with you and pass the time of day—found out that this fellow was a baseball scout. Well, it so happened that I went with this conductor’s daughter—Lady Burns—at school. So naturally—me going with his daughter and all—what the heck—he couldn’t wait to tell this scout how great I was. How I could pitch and hit and run and do just about everything. He was such a convincing talker, and this scout needed an excuse so bad for where he’d been those ten days, that the scout—Dick Williams was his name—decided, “Doggone it, I’ve got something here.”

  When he got back to San Francisco, of course they wanted to know where the heck he’d been and what had happened. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been looking over a ballplayer at Ada, Oklahoma. His name is Paul Waner and he’s only nineteen years old, and I think he’s really going to make it big. I’ve watched him for ten days and I don’t see how he can miss.”

  Then Dick quickly wrote me a letter. He said, “I’ve just talked to the Frisco ball club about you. I heard about you through this conductor, Burns. I told them that I saw you and all that, and I want you to write me a letter and send it to my home. Don’t send it to the ball club, send it to my home. Tell me all about yourself: your height, your weight, whether you’re left-handed or right-handed, how fast you can run the hundred, and all that. So I’ll know, see, really know.”

  So I wrote him the letter he wanted, and sent it to his home, not really thinking too much about it at the time. But the next spring, darned if they didn’t send me a contract. However, I sent it right back, ’cause my Dad always wanted me to go to school. He didn’t want me to quit college. My father was a farmer and he wanted his sons to get a good education.

  But they sent the contract right back to me, and even upped the ante some. So I said, “Dad, I’ll ask them for $500 a month, and if they give it to me will you let me go?”

  He thought about it awhile, and finally said, “Well, if they’ll give you $500 a month starting off, and if you’ll promise me that if you don’t make good you’ll come right back and finish college, then it’s OK with me.”

  “Why surely, I’ll do that,” I said.

  So I told the Frisco club about those conditions. But it didn’t make any difference to them. Because they could offer you any salary at all and look you over, and if you weren’t really good they could just let you go and they’d only be out expenses. They had nothing to lose.

  So out I went to San Francisco for spring training. That was in 1923. I was only nineteen years old, almost twenty, just an ol’ country boy. I didn’t even know, when I got there, that they had a boat going across to San Francisco. My ticket didn’t call for any boat trip. But after the train got into Oakland you got on a ferry and went across San Francisco Bay. Boy, as far as I was concerned that was a huge ocean liner!

  I had hardly arrived out there before I met Willie Kamm, Lew Fonseca, and Jimmy O’Connell. Those three used to pal around together a lot, because they all came from the Bay Area. I was anxious to be friendly and all, so I said to them, real solicitous-like, “Well, do you fellows think you’ll make good up here?” (All the while thinking to myself, you know, “Gee, you sure don’t look like it to me.”)

  How was I to know that all three of them already were established Big Leaguers? It turned out that they were just working out with the Frisco club until their own training camps opened. But I didn’t know that. That was a big joke they never let me forget—a kid like me asking them did they think they’d make good!

  Anyway, there I was, a rookie who’d never played a game in organized ball, at spring training with the San Francisco club in the Coast League, which was the highest minor league classification there was. I was a pitcher then, a left-handed pitcher. At Ada I’d played first base and the outfield when I wasn’t pitching, but the Frisco club signed me as a pitcher.

  The first or second day of spring training we had a little game, the Regulars against the Yannigans—that’s what they called the rookies—and I was pitching for the Yannigans. The umpire was a coach by the name of Spider Baum. Along about the sixth inning my arm started to tighten up, so I shouted in, “Spider, my arm is tying up and getting sore on me.”

  “Make it or break it!” he says.

  They don’t say those things to youngsters nowadays. No, sir! And maybe it’s just as well they don’t, because what happened was that, sure enough, I broke it! And the next day, gee, I could hardly lift it.

  I figured that was the end of my career, and in a few weeks I’d be back in Ada. I was supposed to be a pitcher, and I couldn’t throw the ball ten feet. But just to keep busy, and look like I was doing something, I fooled around in the outfield and shagged balls for the rest of them. I’d toss the ball back underhanded, because I couldn’t throw any other way. I did that day after day, but my arm didn’t get any better.

  After the regular day’s practice was over, the three Big Leaguers—Willie Kamm, Lew Fonseca, and Jimmy O’Connell—would stay out an extra hour or so and practice hitting, and I shagged balls for them, too. I figured I’d better make myself useful in any way I could, or I’d be on my way back to Oklahoma.

&nb
sp; I don’t know which one of them mentioned it to the others, but after about a week or so of this they decided that maybe I’d like a turn at hitting. Especially since if I quit shagging for them, they’d have to go chase all those balls themselves. And they didn’t relish the idea of doing that.

  So they yelled, “Hey, kid! You want to hit some?”

  “Sure I do,” I said.

  So they threw, and I hit. They just let me hit and hit and hit, and I really belted that ball. There was a carpenter building a house out just beyond the right-field fence, about 360 or 370 feet from home plate. He was pounding shingles on the roof, and he had his back to us. Well, I hit one, and it landed on the roof, pretty close to him. He looked around, wondering what the devil was going on. The first thing you know, I slammed another one out there and it darned near hit him. So he just put his hammer down, and sat there and watched. And I kept right on crashing line drives out there all around where he was sitting. Of course, they were lobbing the ball in just right, and heck—I just swished and away it went.

  Paul Waner

  When we were finished, we went into the clubhouse and nobody said a word to me. Not a word. And there was only dead silence all the while we showered, and got dressed, and walked back to the hotel. We sat down to dinner, and still not a single one of them had said “You looked good,” or “You did well,” or anything like that.

  But when we were almost through eating dinner the manager, Dots Miller, came over to my table. He said, “Okie, tomorrow you fool around in the outfield. Don’t throw hard, just toss ’em in underhanded. And you hit with the regulars.”

  Well, boy, that was something! I gulped, and felt like the cat that just ate the canary. And from then on I was with the regulars, and I started playing.