by Gutman; Bill
Some rumors surfaced that another syndicate of gamblers had come on the scene and now wanted the Sox to win. Others said that except for the so-called leaders, Gandil and Risberg, the Sox' players hadn't gotten the money they were promised. One more Chicago victory and the series would be even at four games each.
Claude Williams was scheduled to pitch the eighth game for the White Sox, and stories later circulated that it would cost him his life if he won. He was told he would be shot right out on the mound.
True or not, observers said Williams pitched like a frightened man. He didn't get through the first inning, and by the time a relief pitcher came in, Cincinnati had a 5-0 lead. They went on to win the game, 10-5, and the World Series, five games to three. Soon after, the real investigation began.
Sox' owner Comiskey offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could provide information that something crooked had taken place. The investigation continued for months, even after the 1920 season had begun. Finally, the eight players and a number of gamblers were indicted. A jury trial brought in a "not guilty" verdict because of the lack of hard evidence. The players celebrated, figuring they were free and clean
But that wasn't the case. In November of 1920, baseball had elected its first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. And Judge Landis knew that a repetition of the fix could ruin baseball. Despite the not guilty verdict in the courts, he banned the eight players from baseball forever, including Buck Weaver, who knew about the fix but never took a penny in bribes and played hard throughout the series. But because he knew about it and said nothing, the judge considered him guilty. Landis's edict contained the following words:
"Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a game, no player that entertains propositions or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in on a conference with a bunch of gamblers in which ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball."
Besides the tragedy of the Black Sox scandal for the Chicago team and all of baseball, the eight banned players had squandered their careers. The best of them had many productive years left as the 1920 season proved. Jackson hit .382, Weaver .333, Felsch .338, Cicotte won twenty-one games, and Claude Williams won twenty-two. Yet they had contributed a black mark on baseball and had to go.
One of the classic stories of the Black Sox scandal involved a small boy who was a rabid Sox fan. When the eight players were accused of taking money to throw the series, the young boy was supposed to have sought out Shoeless Joe Jackson, looked into his eyes,
and uttered a sentence still often quoted today."Say it ain't so, Joe."
Alas, it was so. And had it not been for the emergence of a rising young slugger named Babe Ruth in 1920, the Black Sox scandal may indeed have threatened the future of baseball. It was Ruth's dynamic home runs, something unseen up to that time, that brought the fans back and restored their faith in the boys' game that eight grown men had almost destroyed. It's an amazing story, even today.
On a lighter note, however, there was the Gas House Gang. That was the nickname given the collection of scrapping, hustling, fighting, joking ballplayers who made up the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals. Playing with a style all their own, the Gas House Gang showed just what teamwork could do. That year they won the National League pennant on the last day of the season and went on to become world champs.
But it was the individuals that made up the team that gave the 1934 Cardinals their character and place in history. Pitcher Dizzy Dean was the resident philosopher, who almost always made good on his many boasts. Third baseman Pepper Martin, known as the Wild Horse of the Osage, was the Pete Rose of his day, a hustling ballplayer and the first to use the headfirst slide. Colorful Leo Durocher, who later gained fame as the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Chicago Cubs, and Houston Astros was the shortstop. Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch played second and also managed the team.
Rip Collins was a power-hitting first baseman, and Hall of Famer Joe "Ducky" Medwick patrolled the outfield. He was as quick with his fists as he was with his bat. Dizzy Dean's kid brother, Paul "Daffy" Dean, was also a mound mainstay that year. In fact, before the 1934 season began, Dizzy bragged that "me 'n Paul" would win forty-five games between them. They won forty-nine.
But what about their colorful nickname? The team was in second place for a good part of the season, chasing the New York Giants. Late in the year they began a stretch run and were winning big. Because of the superstitions many ballplayers carry, the Cards didn't want to change anything that might jeopardize their winning streak. One of the things they refused to do was have their uniforms washed.
During a road trip they played on several wet fields. The uniforms got even dirtier. Martin and Frisch were always sliding headfirst and theirs were caked with mud. Most of their caps were bent and twisted. By the time they came into New York to meet the Giants, the club looked like a bunch of bums off the sandlots. As Leo Durocher recalled: "We looked horrible, we knew it, and we gloried in it."
By the time the club left New York, a writer had dubbed them the Gas House Gang, after the sleazy Gas House district in the city. But it was the players themselves who made the name fit.
Many of the Cardinals, like Martin and Dean, were small-town boys who always liked a good time. To them, baseball and all that went with it was one big game. When the club was on the road, they played pranks on each other and on people they'd meet along the way.
Some of the things they did were nothing more than the acts of grown men who were still kids at heart. They would set off smoke bombs, drop water bags on people, and pretend to be firemen. Anything for a laugh. While they often fought among themselves, they would come to the aid of a teammate in a split second. The Gas House Gang was the personification of teamwork in every sense of the word.
And they won, catching the Giants at the end to take the pennant. The World Series that year went the full seven games as the Detroit Tigers gave the Cards all they could handle. But in the end, the Gas House Gang prevailed, and they completed their legendary season as World Champions.
The seventh game was a fitting conclusion. Dizzy Dean predicted he would pitch a shutout in the finale, and while he gave Manager Frisch and his teammates several nervous moments with his zany antics, he made good still another boast and won it, 11-0. In fact, Dizzy and Daffy won two games each in the fall classic, to make the ending even more perfect. The Gas House Gang would have it no other way.
Chapter 5
UTTERLY AMAZING
Baseball has always been considered the national pastime. There have been many games, many players, many pennant races, and many records set and broken down through the years. Yet every once in a while there is an achievement that stands above the rest as amazing. It can be a single event, or an achievement of several years, or even an entire career. But it's something a single player accomplished in his career, or at a point in his career. And even the most diehard baseball fan stands in awe of its greatness.
There are many kinds of these utterly amazing baseball achievements. Let's take a brief look at some of them. And remember, they really happened.
Today, pitchers are not expected to go nine innings. A complete game from a starter is a welcomed bonus, but teams are ready if the starting pitcher falters. There are all kinds of relief specialists--the long man, the middle man, and that most valuable commodity, the short man, the stopper who gets the save. Stoppers like Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers, Willie Hernandez, and Dan Quisenberry are as well known today as the top starting pitchers.
But years ago, there were no relief specialists. Pitchers were expected to finish what they started. And they were also expected to pitch a slew of innings without complaint. Take the case of Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn. In 1884, Old Hoss was one of two pitchers toiling for the New York Giants. When the other pitcher, Charlie Sweeney, left the team in midseason, Old Hoss had to pitch every day. Yes, every day! So that's what h
e did. Modern-day pitchers would probably get a sore arm just thinking about what Radbourn did in 1884.
Old Hoss started seventy-two times and never came out for a reliever. Not once. He pitched a total of 630 innings and started his team's final thirty-eight games. At one point he won eighteen straight, tossed eleven shutouts, and finished the season with an earned run average of 1.38. His record in 1884 was sixty games won and only twelve lost.
Even more amazing is the fact that a year earlier Old Hoss started seventy-two times and had a 44-23 record. And in the three seasons following 1884, he started forty-nine, fifty-eight, and forty-eight times. So in a period of five years, Old Hoss Radbourn dragged his arm out to the mound for 299 starts, averaging one start shy of sixty a year. Whatever happened to sore arms? A pitcher couldn't afford one back then. Now, that's utterly amazing.
Some twenty years after Hoss Radbourn's incredible performance, there was still another pitching feat that is still remembered today. During the 1905 season, Christy Mathewson compiled a 31-8 record for the New York Giants. That was surely a great record, but then again, Mathewson was a great pitcher, a future Hall of Famer who would win 373 games during his career. But what was really amazing was his pitching in the World Series that year.
The Giants met the Philadelphia Athletics in the fall classic and won it in five games. Three times Christy Mathewson went to the mound in the series. Three times he came away a winner. And three times he shut the Athletics out! Without a single run. All blanks. In twenty-seven innings, all the Athletics managed off Matty was fourteen hits. It was a performance unmatched ever again in more than eighty years of World Series play.
And speaking of incredible performances, it's hard to match what a journeyman outfielder named James Lamar Rhodes did for the New York Giants in 1954. "Dusty" Rhodes spent seven seasons with the New York and San Francisco Giants from 1952 to 1959. He was always a part-time player, a pinch hitter who had great defensive deficiencies. In other words, he couldn't field a lick.
In his seven seasons with the Giants, Dusty Rhodes , was a .253 hitter. But in 1954, he was Superman!
That year, he was a pinch hitter with a magic touch. In 164 at bats, he hit fifteen home runs, had fifty RBIs, and batted .341. But more amazing than that was his clutch hitting ability, as the Giants drove toward the National League pennant. Manager Leo Durocher remembered it well.
"Every time we needed a pinch hit to win a ball game, there was Dusty Rhodes to deliver it for us," the manager said.
And like the great basketball player who wants the ball when the game is on the line, Dusty Rhodes wasn't afraid to bring his bat to home plate. Whenever the big hit was needed, he would approach his manager and in his Alabama accent, say, "Ah'm your man, Skip."
But there's more. If you think Dusty Rhodes had a great regular season, just listen to what he did in the World Series that year. Playing against the favored Cleveland Indians, winners of 111 games, the Giants took game one into the tenth inning tied at 2-2. That's when Dusty Rhodes came up to pinch-hit for Monte Irvin with two runners on.
Facing twenty-three-game winner Bob Lemon, Rhodes promptly lined a home run over the rightfield fence to win the game.
The next day the Indians had a 1-0 lead in the fifth behind another twenty-three-game winner, Early Wynn. When the Giants put a pair on in the fifth, Manager Durocher sent Rhodes up again. This time Dusty lined a single to center to tie the game. Before the inning ended the Giants had a 2-1 lead. Then in the seventh, Rhodes, who had stayed in the game, slammed a Wynn knuckler against the facade of the upper deck to make it 3-1, the way it ended.
In contest number three, the Giants had a 1-0 lead against nineteen-game winner Mike Garcia when Durocher used his trump card early. He sent Rhodes up as a pinch hitter in just the third inning. But the bases were loaded and the manager wanted to try to break it open. That's the kind of confidence he had in Dusty Rhodes. Sure enough, Dusty responded with a slashing single to drive home two more runs. The Giants went on to win it, 6-2, setting the stage for a 7-4 victory the next day and a sweep of the series.
All Dusty Rhodes did was get four straight pinch hits and drive home seven runs. It capped a season in which he was absolutely amazing.
Some hitting feats take place over a single season while others
take longer to achieve. Both ways can dazzle the imagination. Take
the case of Rogers Hornsby, one of the greatest hitters who ever
lived. He compiled utterly amazing feats over the short term, such as
his record-breaking .424 batting average in 1924. But his long-term
achievements are just as titanic, especially his .358 career batting
mark. Yet even more impressive is what he accomplished over a five-year period beginning in 1921. For those five seasons, Rogers Hornsby had to be the greatest hitter who ever lived.
To hit .400 for a single season is an awesome feat in itself. The last .400 hitter in the majors was Ted Williams in 1941, and before him Bill Terry in 1930. Rogers Hornsby hit .400 a record-tying three times. In fact, he not only hit .400, he averaged .400 for five full seasons! And for those who aren't sure, a .400 average means two hits in every five trips to the plate.
The Rajah started his five-year spree by hitting .397 in 1921. The following year he had his first .400 season, hitting .401 and also winning the Triple Crown, with forty-two home runs and 152 RBIs. Limited to just 107 games by injuries in 1923, Hornsby "slumped" to a mere .384. But he bounced back with a vengeance in 1924 with his big .424 average. And to show none of it was a fluke, he followed up with a .403 season in 1925, taking another Triple Crown with thirty-nine homers and 143 ribbies to go with his out-of-sight batting average.
For those five seasons, Rogers Hornsby had 1,078 hits in 2,679 at bats for a .402 batting average. A righthanded hitter who stood deep in the batter's box and stepped into the ball, Homsby could go to all fields and hit with power. He credited his sharp eyesight for his batting prowess and wouldn't even read a book or go to the movies, fearful of eyestrain.
Whatever he did, it worked. Because Rogers Hornsby's batting feats over that five-year period just might be the greatest prolonged hitting performance baseball has ever seen.
It's difficult to talk about the hitting of Rogers Hornsby without mentioning the man with whom he is often compared, the great Tyrus Raymond Cobb. Ty, of course, was the complete player of the early days, a ferocious competitor who would do anything to win. He is still considered by many the greatest player of all time.
Cobb, of course, set and still holds many records. His name was in the news in 1985 as Cincinnati's Pete Rose attempted (and ultimately succeeded) to break his lifetime record of 4,191 base hits. But of all Cobb's achievements over his twenty-four-year career, perhaps the most memorable was the stranglehold he had on the American League batting title.
In all, Ty won twelve batting crowns, an all-time record by far. Of those, nine came in succession from 1907 through 1915. Imagine that, for a period of nine years, no player in the entire American League could compile a higher season's average than Ty Cobb. He hit over .400 twice in the string, and for a four-year period from 1910 to 1913 averaged .403.
Finally, in 1916, Tris Speaker broke through and won the bat crown with a .386 mark to Ty's .371. But Cobb came right back to win three more in a row. He later had seasons of .389, .401, and .378, in which he didn't win the batting title, but they show the level of play Ty maintained after the age of thirty.
He was one of the greatest, all right. And it's safe to say no one player will ever dominate the batting title again the way Ty Cobb did. It was utterly amazing.
Back to the mound. Another amazing pitching feat that deserves mention took place over a period of fourteen years. It began as a tragic accident, but in a strange twist of fate, it turned out for the best.
The pitcher's name was Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown. He was born in Nyesville, Indiana, way back in 1876. But from the time he arrived in the big league
s with St. Louis in 1903 until he retired in 1916, he was universally known as Three Finger Brown.
Why Three Finger? Simple. Mordecai Brown only had three fingers on his right hand, his pitching hand. That was the result of a farming accident when he was a youngster. But Mordecai still wanted to pitch, and he gripped the ball the only way he could with his thumb and two remaining fingers. The result was a strange hop on the ball, one he probably couldn't have achieved had his hand not been injured.
So Three Finger Brown made the majors, and before he was through won 239 games, including six straight twenty-game seasons. He pitched some epic battles against Christy Mathewson when Brown was a Cub and Matty a Giant. To top it all off, Mordecai Three Finger Brown was eventually elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. And all because a farming accident cost him two fingers off his pitching hand.
Back in Mordecai Brown's day, medical science wasn't advanced enough to treat serious sports injuries. Brown was lucky he could pitch after his hand injury. Players today depend on the doctors and all the advances in sports medicine to keep them going. Perhaps the most notable example of modern medicine at its best is the case of Tommy John, the man with the bionic arm.
John was a stylish left-hander who came up with Cleveland in 1963 as a twenty-year-old rookie. Two years later he went over to the White Sox and became a reliable, if not sensational starter. He had some winning seasons and some losing years. In 1972, he was traded to the L.A. Dodgers, where he seemed to be coming into his own. He had an 11-5 mark, then a career best 16-7 record in 1973 at age thirty. It seemed as if he was a late bloomer, especially when he compiled an impressive 13-3 mark through July 17 of 1974.
But with his sights set on his first twenty-victory campaign, Tommy John saw it all come to a halt. He suffered a severe elbow injury in a game against Montreal, and for a while it looked as if his career was over. He had a ruptured ligament, which years ago could not have been repaired. But in a landmark surgical procedure, Dr. Frank Jobe reconstructed John's arm, placing a tendon from his right forearm into his left elbow.