Pinstripe Empire

by Marty Appel

  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 2⅔ 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 o
f 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.

  IN 1938 IT was Gordon at second, already being called the best second baseman in the league. Nicknamed “Flash” after the comic book character, he became the first second baseman to top 20 homers, and his 25 was a rookie record for second basemen until Dan Uggla of Florida broke it in 2006. Gordon was born in Los Angeles but raised in Arizona and Portland, Oregon. He played halfback for the University of Oregon and was signed by Essick after his sophomore year.

  As his daughter lovingly explained at her late father’s induction to the Hall of Fame in 2009, Joe was also a classical violinist, a cowboy, and a ventriloquist.

  This time the Yanks won 99 and finished nine and a half games on top in winning their tenth pennant. So deep was the Yankee organization by this time that the 1938 “Little World Series” for the minor league championship pitted Newark against Kansas City—both Yankee farm clubs.

  Gehrig’s streak passed 2,000 and went to 2,122, although his hitting fell off and he batted under .300 for the first time: .295 with 29 homers. There was no evidence of an illness or an injury, and some spoke of the natural progression of age. But if he was in the early stages of his illness, then it was a remarkable year, playing every game and belting his record 23rd career grand slam.

  Henrich took over in right while Selkirk shifted to left. DiMaggio held out almost all of spring training, looking for $40,000, accepting $25,000—and when he signed, he had to miss two weeks of the season to get in shape. The Yanks were 6–6 without him, and when he returned, he collided on a short fly ball with Gordon, knocking out both players. He heard boos when he returned to Yankee Stadium for the first time, but they didn’t last long.

  On Memorial Day, May 30, a crowd of 81,841 crammed into the stadium for the biggest crowd in club history. Fire-safety laws were loosely enforced at the time, and so long as people were lined up for tickets, they were ushered in.

  The Yankees held their first Ladies’ Day on April 30, 1938, allowing 4,903 women in for free. (The announced Saturday crowd was sixteen thousand.) Ladies’ Day would continue until 1972, when a few men brought suit against the team, claiming the free admission discriminated against them. They won, and that was the end of Ladies’ Day for everybody.

  ON AUGUST 27, Monte Pearson, working on two days’ rest, hurled the first ever no-hitter at Yankee Stadium, with Gordon and Henrich each homering twice in a 13–0 pounding of his old team, the Indians. Pearson, who won his tenth straight and went to 13–5, walked two in the third no-hitter in team history. The thirties was such a hitter’s era that there were only eight pitched in the majors for the entire decade.

  Thirty-year-old Spud Chandler was 14–5 in his first full year with the team. A product of Georgia, Chandler had started his minor league career at twenty-four. He was unspectacular in the minors, and his 14–13 record at Newark in ’36 hardly foretold big-league stardom, but the six-foot right-hander was a battler. He had graduated from the University of Georgia and played halfback for the Bulldogs. He lived in Royston, Ty Cobb’s hometown. Chandler had fought his way up the ladder to reach the majors, and by the time he was done, he had the highest winning percentage of any pitcher with 100 victories (he was 109-43, .717), and he would be the only Yankee pitcher to capture an MVP Award, winning in 1943.

  If the season had a low moment, it was provided by Jake Powell. With radio still fairly new, Powell agreed to do a pregame interview on Chicago’s WGN with White Sox announcer Bob Elson prior to the July 29 game. Elson asked, “What do you do in the off-season to keep in shape?” Powell, who had barnstormed against Negro League teams in the off-season, responded, “I’m a policeman in Dayton, Ohio, and I keep in shape by cracking niggers off the head with my nightstick.”

  Certainly in the all-white clubhouses of 1938, a line like this would have gotten its share of laughter and would have been forgotten. One might even have suspected that a player could get away with such a statement to a broader audience. There was little thought to racial sensitivities. Judge Landis had always maintained that there was no color line in baseball. “If a Negro player was ever to show the kind of talents necessary to play in the Major Leagues, there is no rule to stop it,” Landis said, in various ways, over the years. But if not under pressure, Landis would probably have ignored Powell’s ill-chosen words. After all, they weren’t recorded, were heard only once, and outright denial or saying it was “out of context” seemed available choices.

  But the words were overheard in Chicago, word spread, and outrage grew. A group of negro leaders went to Landis (who was headquartered in Chicago) demanding that Powell be banned for life.

  This demand actually gave Landis wiggle room. He could reject the demand and still punish Powell, winning on all scores. That he did punish Powell was seen by some as no less than startling, giving his previous lack of any sensitivity on matters of race.

  He suspended Powell for ten games, the first time that a major league player had ever been suspended for a racist remark. Furthermore, Barrow and Ruppert, after hearing talk of a possible negro boycott of Ruppert’s beer, ordered that Powell make an “apology tour” of black newspapers and black-owned bars in Harlem. As outrageous as Powell’s remarks were, it was equally surprising that Landis and the Yankees then did what was viewed as the “right thing.” It would still be eight years before the Dodgers would sign Jackie Robinson, but the Powell affair was a stepping stone, a moment when the white press had no cho
ice but to visit bigotry in the game.

  After the 1940 season, the Yankees sent Jake Powell to the minors, although he would later return to play during the war with the Senators and Phillies.

  In November of 1948, he and his girlfriend were brought in for questioning over a bounced check at a Washington hotel. He asked if he could speak to his girlfriend alone, at which point he apologized for the bad check and asked her to marry him. She told him no, admonished him for getting into the mess, and went home. He gave her taxi money and shouted at her, “To hell with it. I’m going to end it all.”

  And he did. He took out a handgun and shot himself in the right temple. He was forty.

  THE ’38 WORLD SERIES was again against the Cubs (marking Powell’s return to Chicago), and this time the Yanks gave them a 4–0 pasting in rapid style, with Ruffing, Gomez, and Pearson winning the first three and Ruffing winning the finale at Yankee Stadium. Frankie Crosetti became a hero in game two when he took Dizzy Dean deep in the eighth inning at Wrigley Field to give the Yanks the lead, although DiMaggio added a two-run homer in the ninth for dessert.

  The Yankees, in winning their seventh world championship, became the first team to win three in a row, and “Break up the Yankees!” was a cry gaining more momentum. They were just too good.

  Playing in his final World Series, Lou Gehrig played errorless ball at first but managed only four singles with no RBI.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE YEAR 1938 HADN’T BEEN A healthy one for Colonel Ruppert. He wasn’t in the clubhouse to celebrate the World Series victory; he listened at home over the radio. His old partner, Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, died on his plantation on Butler Island near Brunswick, Georgia, on March 28. The Colonel issued a statement remembering the man with whom he’d entered baseball, but he couldn’t attend the funeral.