by Marty Appel
Berra’s stock seemed to rise with the Yankees when Mel Ott, managing the Giants, offered MacPhail $50,000 for him. MacPhail summoned Yogi to his office at 745 Fifth. He was expecting more than a five-foot-seven bow-legged figure. He told others that he looked like the “bottom of an unemployed acrobatic team.”
Yogi hit .314 at Newark in 1946 and was called up to the parent club for the final weeks of the season, just as Dickey was turning the team over to Neun. Dickey may not have been there to bring him along—then—but he would be back in spring training to make a special student out of him, to “learn him” the finer points of catching, as Yogi was still moving between the outfield and the catching positions, finding his way.
In spring training, Berra impressed people with his play in left, enabling Henrich to move to first. But on May 6, with Aaron Robinson nursing a sore back, Yogi caught Reynolds and essentially began his eighteen-season Yankee career, during which he would make the All-Star team every year from 1948 to 1962. He would play more World Series games than any player in history, and would come to be seen as the team’s “assistant manager,” even while still a young player. There came a time when almost every other team in the league was using a catcher developed by the Yankees, unable to unseat Yogi. Gus Triandos, Sherm Lollar, Clint Courtney, Lou Berberet, Darrell Johnson, Hal Smith, and Gus Niarhos had all wound up playing elsewhere. It was a testament to the quality of Berra’s play and the strength of the Yankee lineup.
One day at his museum, Yogi showed me how his glove manufacturer would remove the web in his catcher’s mitt and replace it with heavy-gauge shoelaces so he could better view pop fouls. “Yogi, you had every advantage going for you, and you had to add to them?” I asked. But he was never one to miss a trick. He was believed to be the first to put his index finger outside the catcher’s mitt for extra protection, and the first to pad the center of his mitt with a woman’s falsie.
MEANWHILE, MACPHAIL WAS a tempest in a teapot, so unlike the staid Yankees of recent vintage.
New baseball commissioner Happy Chandler convened a hearing in late March of ’47 to sort through assorted disputes between the Yankees and Dodgers. The press called it the “Battle of the Century.”
Branch Rickey was angered that MacPhail had signed two of his coaches, Dressen and Red Corriden, who had been under contract to Brooklyn.
On March 10, the Dodgers left Havana after two games with the Yankees, with MacPhail claiming they had pledged to stay for a third.
MacPhail’s flirtation with Durocher as manager (or was it the other way around?) seemed to be in violation of a contract.
Durocher was in trouble for palling around with gamblers, but MacPhail was seen in the company of Memphis Engelberg and Connie Immerman, both alleged gamblers, during one of the Havana games.
There was no love lost between Rickey and MacPhail, and these were two of baseball’s glamour franchises. So Chandler hauled them all in.
Six days before the start of the regular season, the Yankees and the Dodgers were fined $2,000 each, Dressen was suspended for thirty days of the regular season, and Durocher was suspended for the full season, Jackie Robinson’s historic rookie year.
Chandler found that the alleged gamblers in Havana were not guests of MacPhail.
Twice during the year, MacPhail had to report to Chandler’s office in Cincinnati to explain why he was breaking a pledge of silence not to discuss the charges and the discipline.
FRED LOGAN DIED on February 8 at sixty-seven, leaving Pete Sheehy in charge of the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium for the next forty years. Logan was the last employee to go back to the origins of the team, the first season at Hilltop Park. He gave them forty-four seasons.
The Yankees began TV broadcasts in 1947, receiving $75,000 from WABD (Dumont Television) to cover all seventy-seven home games plus eleven selected games from Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia, with Bill Slater as the sole announcer. Mel Allen and Russ Hodges handled the radio on WINS, which still had a much bigger audience.
APRIL 27, A Sunday, was declared Babe Ruth Day by Commissioner Chandler. Fifty-eight thousand packed Yankee Stadium to see Babe in person, while fans in other ballparks heard the ceremonies via radio over their PA systems. It was a rare appearance for the Babe, who was showing the effects of a battle with throat cancer. Chandler’s office said it was the first national commemorative day for a baseball figure since founding father Harry Wright had one in 1896.
Chandler was widely booed by Yankee fans, and even MacPhail instructed Mel Allen, the field announcer, to emphasize that “this is Babe Ruth Day, with other personalities on the program entitled to respect as well.” Five thousand dollars of the day’s proceeds was presented to Ruth, who turned it over to the Ford Foundation for a program sponsoring kids. Many in the press admired not only the way Chandler took the booing, but that his first words were “This is Albert B. Chandler.”
Ruth required assistance to climb the dugout steps. He wore his now familiar camel hair coat, and removed his matching hat before speaking. He was coughing quite steadily, but managed to say,
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen … you know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad. You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth. That means the boys. And after you’re a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in your national pastime.
The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball. As a rule, some people think if you give them a football or baseball or something like that, naturally, they’re athletes right away. But you can’t do that in baseball. You’ve gotta start from way down the bottom, when you’re six or seven years of age.
You can’t wait until you’re fifteen or sixteen. You’ve gotta let it grow up with you, and if you’re successful and try hard enough, you’re bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now. [He pointed to the current Yankees, kneeling on the field.]
There’s been so many lovely things said about me, I’m glad I had the opportunity to thank everybody.
There weren’t many dry eyes in the house. Ed Barrow, who had retired as a director in December, sat in a mezzanine box and wouldn’t go down on the field. “I never did like to cry in public,” he told Dan Daniel.
Babe was just fifty-two, but he seemed eighty. It was apparent that he was gravely ill, and indeed he had had throat surgery at Memorial Hospital in New York. “His health,” wrote Shirley Povich in the Washington Post, “has been of national concern for weeks.”
Every appearance from then on seemed it could be his last.
THE REGULAR SEASON started slowly but the Yanks took over first place on June 15 and never lost it, their nineteen-game winning streak essentially putting an end to any pennant race. They won by twelve games. Harris must have thought he’d died (three years in Buffalo) and then ascended to heaven (where he was handed the Yankees’ managing job).
In May, MacPhail leveled a hundred-dollar fine on DiMaggio for missing a film shoot with Army Signal Corps newsreel photographers. Other players were fined lesser amounts for missing club-mandated dinners. It was another case of MacPhail upstaging the manager. DiMaggio, fined? Publicly embarrassed? Under McCarthy, who never went public with discipline and who always handled such matters without front-office interference, it would have been unimaginable.
“I needed batting practice badly and did not want to give up that time to anything else,” said Joe.
“When Larry told me what he planned to do, I told him to forget it,” said Harris. “Don’t fine them. Let me talk to the boys.”
But MacPhail fined them anyway. To some, it was an outrage. DiMaggio didn’t bite back. But it was a most undignified act against this towering figure.
ON SEPTEMBER 28, the final game of the season, the Yankees held their “second annual” Old-Timers’ Day.
This one featured Ruth (the only one who didn’t suit up), Cobb (thrown out on a bunt at age sixty-one), S
peaker, Young, Sisler, Simmons, Mack, Cochrane, Foxx, Lajoie, Grove, and a host of former Yankees going back to Peckinpaugh and Pipp. Dickey, now managing his hometown team in Little Rock, did not attend. The proceeds went to the Babe Ruth Foundation. Ruth thanked the crowd “in a husky voice that could scarcely be heard,” said the Times.
BROOKLYN WON THE National League pennant, so Rickey and MacPhail would be in a Subway Series, the first to be televised. Gillette was the principal sponsor, and their brassy opening theme—“To LOOK sharp!… .”—became almost an anthem of big-time sports coverage for the next decade and a half.
In game one, the Yankees started their own rookie standout, Connecticut’s Frank “Spec” Shea, “the Naugatuck Nugget,” who burst onto the scene with a 14–5 record. The twenty-six-year-old right-hander was 15–5 in 1946 for Stengel’s Oakland Oaks and made the jump to the majors with ease. His nickname had nothing to do with wearing glasses, which he didn’t. His father had freckles and was nicknamed “Speckle,” which was eventually shortened.
Shea, with four innings of relief from Page, won the opener 5–3. Reynolds won game two, and the Dodgers won game three at Ebbets Field, although Berra hit the first pinch-hit home run in Series history, in this, the forty-fourth World Series.
In game four, the unlikely Bill Bevens stood on the verge of baseball history. Despite a 7–13 regular season, and despite a sloppy outing that would see him walk 10 batters, the big thirty-year-old righty led 2–1 with two out in the ninth and a no-hitter on the line. Not everyone realized it was a no-hitter, given all the baserunners in the game.
But he was nevertheless on the verge of immortality as he worked from the stretch with pinch runners Al Gionfriddo and Eddie Miksis on base, facing pinch hitter Cookie Lavagetto. Gionfriddo’s steal of second helped set up the inning, and some blamed the inexperienced Berra for allowing the steal. Dickey would help eliminate that problem in a hurry the following year.
Harris added to the controversy by having Bevens intentionally walk the next batter, defying the conventional wisdom to never put the winning run on base.
With a 1-and-1 count, “I pitched him high and away,” said Bevens. “It looked like a lazy fly ball to right. I thought Tommy [Henrich] would catch it. But it stayed up in the air. I saw Tommy jump and the ball land about four feet over his glove.”
On the radio, Red Barber screamed, “And here comes the tying run, and here comes the winning run … ,” as the Dodgers won the game 3–2.
So much for the first no-hitter in World Series history.
Wrote Dick Young in the Daily News, “That’s when God’s Little Green Acre became a bedlam. The clock read 3:51, Brooklyn Standard Time—the most emotional minute in the lives of thousands of Faithful. There was Lavagetto being mobbed—and off to the side, there was Bevens, head bowed low, walking dejectedly through the swarming crowd, and completely ignored by it. Just a few seconds earlier, he was the one who everybody was planning to pat on the back. He was the one who would have been carried off the field—the only pitcher ever to toss a no-hitter in a series. Now he was just another loser.”
“Look,” reflected Bevens, years later. “Every kid has a dream, right? Mine was to meet Babe Ruth, be a Yankee, and pitch in a World Series. Well, I reached all three, so how can I complain? Of course, it would have been nice to know all those years ago that Lavagetto couldn’t hit a low inside pitch. But what the hell.”
The Series returned to Yankee Stadium, the Yanks up 3–2, but the Dodgers tied it, helped by a remarkable catch by Gionfriddo at the left-field bullpen, robbing DiMaggio of a three-run homer. Red Barber called, “Back, back, back, back, back, back … he makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen! Oh, Doctor!” to his amazed audience.
In a rare display of emotion on the field, the Yankee Clipper kicked at the dirt as the ball was caught, just as he was approaching second base. It was a body-language “shucks.” Death Valley had done him in again. He managed only 148 Yankee Stadium home runs in his thirteen-season career, none in the World Series.
Shea, on just one day’s rest after a complete-game win in game five, had nothing in game seven, but relief from Bevens (2⅔ innings) and Page (five shutout innings) gave New York a 5–2 win, and the Yankees had their eleventh world championship. Bevens, Gionfriddo, and Lavagetto would never play another major league game.
And then came the fireworks.
MacPhail, listening with writers to the final half inning in the press room, drinking and anticipating the upcoming celebration, suddenly told the press, “That’s it. That does it. That’s my retirement,” as the game-ending double play was recorded. And with that, the writers suddenly couldn’t leave for the clubhouse. MacPhail was now the story.
“I’m through. I’ve got what I wanted and I’m through. I can’t take any more of this. My health won’t stand it.”
Writers who had been covering MacPhail for years couldn’t be sure if he meant it, knowing he was capable of outlandish statements, sometimes fueled by liquor. But all they saw was beer, tears, and emotion.
He went into the clubhouse, and the writers followed. The players were into their celebration, hugging, posing for photos, singing, drinking beer.
MacPhail found Weiss. “Here! You!” he said, and then he turned to the writers, who didn’t know for sure whether the world championship or MacPhail was the story. “I want you to say this in your story. I built the losing team out there, but he’s the guy who built the winners.”
Weiss smiled but was unsure what was going on as MacPhail worked the room, congratulating the players and telling them all that “I’m through.”
Topping and Webb didn’t know what to make of it. It was news to them. Red Patterson didn’t have a clue. They’d lived through so much with MacPhail. One night, it was said, Topping and Tom Yawkey got drunk at 21 and traded DiMaggio for Ted Williams. The next morning, sober, they called it off. It was a roller-coaster ride, to be sure, and not always Macphail’s doing.
Attention turned to the celebration. There was rookie Bobby Brown, the med student who had three pinch hits, celebrating with the handsome hero Joe Page. This was a first Series for many of them, and of course the first Yankee triumph for Harris.
Rickey went to the Dodgers’ clubhouse to thank his men for their effort. As he left, he bumped into MacPhail. They’d never been on easy terms. But MacPhail wrapped his arm around Rickey and began talking about what a great Series it had been.
What Rickey said could be heard clearly by those within a few feet. “I am taking your hand,” he said, “only because people are watching us. Don’t you ever speak to me again.”
Now it was everybody downtown to the Biltmore Hotel for the official party, the celebration of the triumph. And there would be held the Battle of the Biltmore.
The stately Biltmore, a classic New York hotel near Grand Central, was often the site of baseball gatherings. League meetings, writers’ dinners, welcome-home dinners, and now a World Series celebration. When MacPhail arrived, he downed a few more beers. People were annoyed with his behavior. He had upstaged the players, upstaged Harris, upstaged everything.
At the party was John McDonald, MacPhail’s old aide in Cincinnati and Brooklyn. Now retired due to bad health, McDonald had written a story for the Saturday Evening Post about MacPhail, one that Larry took exception to. Spotting McDonald, to whom he had sent a telegram calling him a Judas, he berated him in person and then punched him in the eye. This wasn’t a first for MacPhail by any means. He was arrested during the ’45 World Series for assault and battery against the manager of the local telephone company near his estate in Maryland.
What was next? He spotted Weiss, there with his wife, Hazel. And he proceeded to give Weiss a stern lecture, may have socked him, and definitely fired him. On the spot. Weiss, the faithful Yankee since 1932, left the party in tears, no easy occurrence for the emotionless GM.
Then MacPhail got into an argument with Topping. Some felt blows were exchanged, but it was done in
a room off to the side and no one was quite certain.
Not only was MacPhail resigning, now he was being pushed. Topping and Webb summoned their attorneys and gave MacPhail until 6:00 A.M. to accept a $2 million offer for his one-third share and get out of their lives.
Lee MacPhail, Larry’s son, was twenty-nine and earning his stripes at the minor league level. A possible irritant in the Larry MacPhail–Weiss relationship could have been an attempt to bring Lee to New York as general manager, with Weiss reporting to him. Both Dan Daniel in the World-Telegram and Milton Gross in the Post reported that to be so. That would not have gone over well.
Said Lee in his book, My Nine Innings, “As soon as I walked into the ballroom I knew that something had happened. But people were reluctant to tell me the sorry details—that my father had argued with and then hit both Weiss and Topping. Everyone was still there and I was soon thrust in the middle of it. Dad had told Weiss he was fired and I remember telling George to ignore it, that he didn’t mean it. However, the damage was already done … I wondered what would happen to me. I am sure that under the circumstances, Topping, Webb and Weiss would have welcomed my resignation. But I had a wife and two kids and needed the job and just waited to see if the ax would fall. George eventually talked to me and said I could stay but they would want me to return to Kansas City, rather than coming to New York.”
LARRY MACPHAIL LIVED thirty-one more years and never ventured into the baseball universe again. For a while his name would come up if a team was for sale, but in time he faded off the radar. Seldom was he seen at baseball events. One night in the early seventies, Bob Fishel tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to Lee MacPhail’s box. There as Lee’s guest was his father, in his first return to the stadium since the Battle of the Biltmore. No longer the Roaring Redhead, he sat quietly. There was, I thought, sadness to the picture. He’d been battling cancer and alcoholism for many years, and had what is now known to be Alzheimer’s disease. He had been raising cattle and breeding horses, but all of that was now gone; he lived in a VA nursing home.