Pinstripe Empire (36 page)

Farley had been a season-ticket holder beginning in 1923 and remained so until his death in 1976, a few weeks after he was honored at opening-day ceremonies for the remodeled Yankee Stadium. (I escorted him onto the field.) He could be counted on to wear a proper straw boater in season, and was especially admired by Phil Rizzuto, who saw greatness in the man.

“He would have been a wonderful owner,” Rizzuto told me on many occasions. “He loved baseball, loved the Yankees, and certainly knew how to use his political clout!”

Usually his interest—in the neighborhood of $6 million—was met with denials, but as early as the summer of ’40 there was confirmation from H. Garrison Silleck Jr., one of the executors of the Ruppert estate.

Different Farley partners emerged every few months, including the owner of Phillips Petroleum and Governor James Cox of Ohio, who had run for president against Harding in 1920. Another was Basil O’Connor, who had been FDR’s law partner and a creator of the March of Dimes. He was a
powerful money-raiser and could have assembled a consortium for Farley to head.

The sale did not happen, but it remained part of the rumor mill.

AFTER FOUR CAKEWALK seasons, the Yankees found themselves in a terrific pennant race throughout 1940. If you lived and breathed Yankees, 1940 was enough to cause anxiety attacks. In fact, in a doubleheader loss to the Tigers at the stadium on a hot July Sunday before 68,590, the fans did lose it. On a questionable umpiring call by Joe Rue on a fair-foul dispute with Henrich, fans began pelting the poor umpire with bottles, half-eaten food, and rolled newspapers and scorecards, an uprising “the like of which has never before been seen either at Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds,” said the
Times.
Police finally led Rue off the field for his own protection.

Around this time, with the Yankees slumping,
Daily News
columnist Jimmy Powers chose to write, “Couldn’t the polio germ be the cause?” The statement infuriated Gehrig, who instituted a lawsuit against Powers, the
News
, and its parent, Tribune Company. It was a scurrilous thing to write, and Gehrig settled the case for $17,500.

To McCarthy, criticized by some as a “push-button manager” blessed with so much talent, it very much came down to a single play in a doubleheader in Cleveland on September 11. The consequences of what happened that day can only be fully appreciated in what would unfold in the coming years, not just days.

The doubleheader was played at vast Municipal Stadium, a park that could hold more than eighty thousand and that would one day be called the Mistake by the Lake. In the forties, it was used mostly on weekends and holidays by the Indians, who played the rest of their games at smaller League Park.

Cleveland fans were pelting the Yankees this day, especially the vulnerable coaches Art Fletcher and Earle Combs, with an assortment of tomatoes and lemons. Their actions infuriated McCarthy, who was crabby about playing on a rainy day so dark and gloomy that the outfielders were hard to make out.

Going into the doubleheader, the Yankees were in third place with twenty-one games remaining. They had not been in first place, even for a single day, all season—but now the possibility stood before them if they could sweep. When they arrived at the ballpark, Detroit was first, 77–57, Cleveland was
second, 76–57, a half game out, and the Yanks third, 75–57, one game out. A sweep of the twin bill could put them in first.

In game one, they beat Bob Feller 3–1 for rookie right-hander Ernie “Tiny” Bonham’s fifth straight win. At 9–3 with a 1.90 ERA, the 215-pounder, who gripped a lead ball in the dugout to make the real ball feel lighter, was proving to be a big-game pitcher. The win put them in first place for a few hours, the only time they would be there all season.

For the second game, amid the falling rain and fruit and vegetables, Ruffing pitched against Al Smith.

“It was disgraceful,” said McCarthy of the fans. “It should have been stopped.” At one point McCarthy almost threw a lemon back into the stands, but thought better of it.

With one out in the third inning and the Yankees leading 2–0, Dahlgren, at first base, dropped a throw from Crosetti, allowing Ben Chapman to get to second. A double and single followed, and then Ruffing threw the wet ball into center field on what could have been a double play. The inning continued, and when it was over, the Indians had a 5–2 lead. They won 5–3 when the umpires stopped play due to darkness and increasing rain after six innings. Instead of first place, the Yanks were still in third.

That was their shot. They were 12–8 the rest of the way and finished third, two games behind Detroit. Except for DiMaggio’s second straight batting title, a .352 showing, it was an “off year” for most of the regulars. When they lost on the final Friday of the season, they were eliminated. Arthur “Red” Patterson, in the
Herald-Tribune
, wrote, “The king is dead—long live the king.” The streak of four consecutive world-championship seasons was done.

The season ended in Washington and the Yanks took the train home. The next day, McCarthy was cleaning out his office. A bunch of New York writers were there too.

One was John Drebinger of the
Times.
I was sitting with Drebby in the Yankee press box some thirty years later. We talked about Gehrig, and the conversation shifted to Dahlgren.

“McCarthy thought he had short arms,” he said. “Not really a good first baseman, in his view.”

I’d never heard about short arms before. But that started Drebinger talking.

“You know,” he said, “McCarthy always felt that the error he made in Cleveland that opened up the floodgates cost him the pennant. He always
believed that if Dahlgren catches that throw from Crosetti, the Yankees win the game, go into first, and stay there.”

I wasn’t familiar with the play; it really wasn’t well known. But Drebby was on a roll.

“Furthermore,” he said, “McCarthy said that if Dahlgren wasn’t a marijuana user, maybe he catches the ball. The darkness, the rain, and his dulled reflexes all made him miss that throw.”

This was pretty amazing stuff, and in the style of the day, “off the record” meant “off the record.” No one wrote it, although John Kieran of the
Times
wrote, “Marse Joe McCarthy’s motto in baseball is … ‘Never throw out the dirty water until you have the clean water in.’ So he must have known something when he let Babe Dahlgren go to the [Boston] Bees.”

Yes, McCarthy let Dahlgren go, and one can be certain he told Barrow what he thought. Plenty of unprinted whispers followed, and Dahlgren’s career was all but over.

Years later, his family tried to restore Babe’s reputation by bringing the whole incident to light in a book called
Rumor in Town
by Dahlgren’s grandson Matt. The very idea that a baseball player might have been using marijuana in 1940, when it seemed limited to jazz musicians and bohemian poets, seemed ludicrous. Certainly it was common in the seventies (a few years behind the trend). But in 1940?

The Yankees went on to win pennants in 1941, 1942, and 1943. If they had won in 1940, it could have meant eight pennants in a row, an unthinkable record. Could one dropped throw truly have prevented such a feat?

McCarthy thought so.

IF THE YANKEES were to right themselves in 1941, McCarthy was determined to try it with rookies. Not since 1926, when Lazzeri and Koenig found themselves at second and short, had such an adventure been undertaken by the team, but Marse Joe was now prepared to hand regular jobs to second baseman Gerry Priddy and shortstop Phil Rizzuto from the Kansas City Blues.

The plan was to move Gordon to first to replace Dahlgren; if needed, Johnny Sturm would also come up from the Blues. As it developed, Priddy was less than the doctor ordered and Gordon returned to second, while Sturm took hold of first.

Young Phil Rizzuto had to displace the popular veteran Crosetti, who, although only twenty-nine, had batted just .194 in 1940.

Such was the Yankee way of doing things that Rizzuto would not easily displace the veteran. Batting-practice swings were tough to come by. He waited for someone to say, “Let the kid hit.” It was DiMaggio who finally spoke up.

The kid hit.

Rizzuto, the son of a streetcar motorman, came from the border of Brooklyn and Queens—Dill Place and Seventy-eighth Road—and played high school ball at Richmond Hills for Al Kunitz, who had been a Yankee batboy before Eddie Bennett. Kunitz had arranged for Rizzuto to have a tryout with Brooklyn, but Casey Stengel, the Dodgers’ manager, told him, “Get a shoeshine box”—he was just too small.

He
was
small. But he had terrific baseball instincts to go with speed, arm strength, range, positioning, and a toughness that his impish, phobia-filled, almost naïve personality belied. He was five foot six and about 150 pounds, a throwback to the Kid Elberfeld days, and maybe that’s what made Ty Cobb tab him as the rare player who could have starred in his day. He put his gum on the top of his cap when he batted for good luck. He was probably the best bunter the Yankees ever had, and a fine base stealer as well. He was a fan favorite almost at once, and continued to be so on through his fifty-seven years with the team, as a player and then as a popular broadcaster.

Kunitz got Rizzuto another tryout, this time at Yankee Stadium under the eyes of Paul Krichell. The Yankees liked tryout camps, trusted their scouts, and ran them well. If you made it through one of them, your future was bright.

So Rizzuto went off to the minors and won Minor League Player of the Year honors in 1940, hitting .347. Twenty-four of the twenty-nine players on the Kansas City roster that year saw major league service. It was a terrific collection of talent.

Rizzuto started on opening day in ’41 in front of President Roosevelt in Washington. He never tired of talking about it. He was basking in the amazement of being a Yankee.

“Listen, Scooter,” Gomez said to him one day, addressing him by his new nickname. “Your parents coming to the game today? I want you to come over to me on the mound like you’re giving me advice. That will impress them; their son, giving advice to the great Gomez.”

As was McCarthy’s wont, he let Rizzuto play for a few weeks, then benched him for Crosetti. He wanted his new shortstop to sit next to him in the dugout and learn some finer points of the game.

“Don’t look at the scoreboard—quick, what’s the count?” he’d say to Phil. He wanted his head in the game at every minute.

On June 16, Crosetti was spiked in a game and Rizzuto returned to short. The position was now his.

Phil would be the butt of practical jokes: insects in his glove, shoes nailed to the floor, his fan mail torn up. He was the little boy afraid of lightning, but he was one tough competitor on the playing field. One day the Yankees would win five world championships in a row with him at shortstop.

Priddy didn’t live up to expectations. His was disrespectful of Gordon, which didn’t ingratiate him with his new teammates. He played only two years as a sub for the Yanks, and then elsewhere until 1953.

In 1973, he was convicted of extortion, threatening to put a bomb on a steamship unless he received $250,000. He spent nine months in prison. “That wasn’t the Gerry I knew,” said Rizzuto, sadly.

Sturm was the team’s regular first baseman throughout ’41 and in the World Series, but it would be his only major league season. He enlisted in the military after the season and badly injured his right hand; two fingers were amputated. He came back to play in the minors but never saw major league action again.

As for Rizzuto, he had a wonderful rookie season and the Yankees tied the major league record for double plays with him at short. DiMaggio took him under his wing. In fact, when the season ended, DiMaggio asked him to fill in for him at a communion breakfast in Newark, where Phil would meet his future wife, Cora. It was all a grand adventure come true for the hometown boy.

Meanwhile, DiMaggio had started the year slowly in defense of his two batting titles, and when he went 1-for-4 on May 15, nobody thought much about it. But when he passed his own personal best with a twenty-four-game hitting streak on June 8, people started to notice.

The club record of twenty-nine, held by Peckinpaugh (1919) and Combs (1931), was broken on June 17. Now radio newscasts were beginning to keep listeners informed. There were no game broadcasts in 1941.

Forty was the next milestone—George Sisler’s modern record. And when he tied and then beat it in a doubleheader on June 29, all of America became captivated by Joe’s streak. This was no longer for the sports pages.
In a nation with its eyes on the possibility of impending war, with fears of Nazi invasions dominating discussions, it was a delight.

“He’s just a man and not a freak … Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” went a popular hit record quickly recorded by Les Brown’s big band, with the vocal by Betty Bonney.

There was the story of Joe’s bat being stolen, and then, mysteriously, recovered. It sold a lot of newspapers!

The pre-1900 mark of Wee Willie Keeler was next. That was forty-four, and Joe made it to forty-five on July 2. Now the record was all his. But how far could he go? Maybe to the professional record of sixty-one, which he set himself in San Francisco?

At League Park in Cleveland on July 16, Joe ran the streak to fifty-six with three hits. He had batted .408 during the 56 games with 91 hits, 56 runs, 55 RBI, and 15 homers. He’d struck out only five times. A few times it took him until his last at-bat, but then he’d come through and the crowd would sigh in relief, then cheer madly. There were no radio broadcasts of the game—the Yankees couldn’t get a sponsor! But it was said that Heinz 57 varieties was ready to pay Joe a lot of money when the streak got to fifty-seven.

For game fifty-seven, DiMaggio shared a cab to Municipal Stadium with Gomez, and the cab driver said, “Make sure you get a hit your first time up. If you don’t, you will be stopped.” DiMaggio tried to ignore the suggestion.

Al Smith, the same man who beat Ruffing in the Dahlgren game ten months before, was on the mound for the Indians. DiMaggio’s first time up, third baseman Kenny Keltner caught a tough grounder deep at the base and threw him out from the foul line. He walked his second time up, as Smith drew boos from the crowd. His third time up he hit another screamer to third, and again Keltner came through with a fine play to nail Joe.