Pinstripe Empire (37 page)

In the eighth, now hitting off Jim Bagby Jr., he hit a bouncer to Lou Boudreau at short. Boudreau turned it into a double play, and the streak was over unless the Indians could tie the game and send it into extra innings. They did make it 4–3, but it wasn’t enough and the streak ended at fifty-six.

It remains, more than seventy years later, maybe the toughest record of all to break, save for Cy Young’s 511 victories. And when it was ruled that no hitting streak could be counted if it spread over two seasons, it meant that a run at fifty-six would have to begin before August 1, or forget it.

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ON JUNE 3, 1941, Lou Gehrig died at his home at 5203 Delafield Avenue in Riverdale, age thirty-seven. Those who were monitoring his health knew the end was imminent. He had worked at his job at the parole board until just weeks before, but no one had written that the end was near.

The Yankees were in Detroit, where his playing streak had ended twenty-five months earlier. McCarthy and Dickey left the club to fly back to New York. At Briggs Stadium, the Yankee players stood before their dugout, caps over their hearts, as flags flew at half staff.

Five thousand lined the streets of Riverdale near Christ Episcopal Church. Stadium manager Charley McManus manned the door to make sure only the invited entered the service. Babe Ruth was there along with four physicians from the Mayo Clinic, Miller Huggins’s brother Arthur, George Ruppert, Barrow, Weiss, the actress wives of DiMaggio and Gomez (neighbors on West End Avenue), batboy Timmy Sullivan, Bill Terry, and Eddie Collins. A floral arrangement was delivered from the “redcaps of Grand Central Terminal.”

Gehrig would be cremated and his remains buried in a grave at Kensico Cemetery, where Ruppert had been laid to rest.

On July 4, a monument to Gehrig, matching Huggins’s, was dedicated in center field, unveiled by Dickey and McCarthy. Connie Mack was among the speakers. McCarthy told people that the position of captain “has died with Lou. There will never be another one of the Yankees.”

Seventy years after his death, neither a cause nor a cure for Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS, has been found.

NERVOUSNESS OVER WAR was evident through news reports about players’ draft physicals and by the introduction of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to precede all games. It was Barrow’s idea to do it daily, not just on holidays. The advent of the PA system allowed recorded music to be played, so a live band wasn’t necessary. In 1941, it was performed on “I Am an American Day” by Lucy Monroe, who would become a fixture at the stadium over the next twenty-five years, dressed in mink and performing the anthem on opening day, holidays, and during the World Series.

ON JUNE 28, the Yanks beat Philadelphia 7–4 behind Atley Donald and began a fourteen-game winning streak that stretched to twenty-nine out of
thirty-two. They wound up winning 101 and finishing seventeen games in first.

DiMaggio won the MVP Award despite Ted Williams hitting a titanic .406. The hitting streak and the .400 season came to grow in legend with the passage of time, as did the larger-than-life reputations of these two giant figures in American culture.

“The difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox,” said Dom DiMaggio to author Leigh Montville, “was that the Yankees always were run as a business. They made sound business moves. The Red Sox, under Yawkey, were a hobby. He always kept friends around too long and made decisions according to who he drank with.”

IN THE NATIONAL League, Brooklyn won its first pennant since 1920. The “Bums,” despite so many losing seasons, had a great fan base, a charming little ballpark in Ebbets Field, a dashing manager in Durocher, and cunning owner Larry MacPhail. They also had a young shortstop named Pee Wee Reese to complement the Yanks’ Rizzuto.

Much had been made over the years of the Yankees-Giants rivalry. Sharing such close quarters, they were natural rivals. But now came the first World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers, a Subway Series with about fifteen miles between them. The fans were very different. Dodger fans were the little guys, the underdogs, the working stiffs from the borough of churches whose players lived in the neighborhood and seemed like regular guys. The Yankee fans were the Wall Street business crowd, better dressed, cockier, and not expecting to really meet any of the players on the street. Their ballpark was staid, proud, awe-inspiring. Ebbets Field was a place you snuck into after five innings, maybe wearing a T-shirt. You might sneak down into a box seat when no one was looking. At Yankee Stadium, you did so at your own peril.

After some talk about maximizing attendance by playing all the games at Yankee Stadium (loudly overruled by Dodger fans), the Series opened October 1 in the Bronx, and once again Ruffing rose to the occasion and won 3–2 with a six-hitter. Ruffing was thirty-seven now, but what a postseason player he was; this win made him an unbeaten 6–0 in World Series play.

Whit Wyatt beat Spud Chandler in game two, 3–2, ending the Yankees’ ten-game World Series winning streak. Game three, in Ebbets Field, was a 2–1 complete game win for Marius Russo, won in the eighth on singles by
Rolfe, Henrich, DiMaggio, and Keller. (This was the first season in which DiMaggio-Keller-Henrich formed the regular outfield.)

Now game four. With two outs in the ninth, it was 4–3 Brooklyn, and they were one out from knotting the Series at 2–2.

Hugh Casey now faced Henrich. With a full count, he unleashed—a curve? A spitball? People have debated it since. Whatever it was, Henrich swung and missed, but made it to first on a passed ball by Mickey Owen.

“Five o’clock lightning.” You didn’t give the Yankees a fourth out, not these Yankees. DiMaggio singled, Keller doubled to score two, Dickey walked, and Gordon doubled to score Dickey. Suddenly it was 7–4 New York, and Murphy retired three straight to nail it down in the last of the ninth. The Yankees took a 3–1 Series lead.

“Hugh Casey didn’t even know how to throw a spitball,” said Durocher to his biographer, Ed Linn, in 1974. “Why should he? Casey had a natural sinker—that’s why he was a relief pitcher … [He] made a great pitch and then everything went wrong. Mickey Owen reached for the ball instead of shifting his feet as he should have, and the ball went off the end of his glove and rolled behind him. It didn’t roll that far, either. If there had been grass behind the plate, there is no question in my mind but that Henrich would have been thrown out at first base.”

Bonham beat Wyatt 3–1 the next day and the Yankees had their ninth world championship. Gordon hit .500 in the Series and walked seven times.

Although the teams played another game, the Owens play came to represent the end of the Series—and with it the end of the prewar era of major league baseball.

Two months after the World Series, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and World War II began. Baseball had little choice but to support the war effort, try to stay vital, show pride when its stars went off to service, and hope that the game still existed as an important part of American culture whenever the war ended. Just holding its own would test its mettle. These were going to be rough years.

THE WAR DIVERTED EVERYONE’S attention for the next four years, and baseball was lucky to be able to continue. And so after a decade of the Great Depression, baseball was still unable to realize its full potential as an entertainment industry. Attendance and revenues would be flat for the better part of fifteen years, but still the Yankees found a way to succeed.

After dismissing Doc Painter as trainer after the ’41 Series and replacing him with Eddie Froelich of the White Sox, the Yanks managed to stay mainly intact in 1942, while players on other teams were getting called up and sent off to war.
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The Yanks lost only Henrich and Sturm to military duty in 1942, and Henrich not until August 31. Tommy played a final game on August 30 during which PA announcer Jack Lenz proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, Tommy Henrich has been ordered to report for active duty with the Coast Guard. This is his last appearance in a Yankee uniform until the war is over.” A thunderous ovation followed, which Henrich called “one of the most touching salutes I’ve ever received.”

That took him out of the pennant race, but the Yankees were eight games up when he left.

Red Rolfe, thirty-three, became a part-time player after developing chronic
ulcerative colitis and retired after the season. At the time, he was probably the best third baseman in the franchise’s history, a lifetime .289 hitter who played for six pennant winners in ten seasons. He would immediately go on to coach baseball and basketball at Yale, come back to coach for the Yankees in 1946, and then manage the Tigers for four seasons. Crosetti wound up playing a lot of third base next to Rizzuto.

Buddy Hassett, born in Manhattan, raised in the Bronx, and a semipro player in Brooklyn, had first been signed by the Yankees in 1936, then came back to play first base in Sturm’s absence after six National League seasons. His teammates loved to hear his beautiful tenor voice; he could have been a professional singer. He hit a credible .284 in his final year in the big leagues, and then went into the service.

The pitching leadership of Ruffing and Gomez was surpassed in ’42 by Bonham (21–5), Chandler (16–5), and Hank Borowy (15–4), with Atley Donald going 11–3. Gomez concluded his Yankee career with a 189–102 record. After the season he took a job at a GE plant in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Lefty, with his signature high leg kick, went out with an 11–2 win at Philadelphia on August 14 and never pitched again, save for one appearance for the Senators in ’43. He would remain a fixture in baseball long after his retirement, first as a manager in the Yankee system (where he gave Eddie Ford the nickname “Whitey”), then as a representative of Rawlings sporting goods. He always thanked Johnny Murphy for saving so many of his wins, and said, “The secret to my success is clean living and a fast outfield!” “I’m the guy who made DiMaggio famous,” he would tell audiences, adding, “I’d rather be lucky than good!”

Tiny Bonham was 79–50 in seven seasons and a two-time All-Star with the Yankees. He was traded to the Pirates in 1947 and gave Pittsburgh three solid seasons before being sidelined by an appendix attack in September of ’49. During surgery he was found to have intestinal cancer and died a week later. He was only thirty-six.

DiMaggio, booed even at home after a wartime spring holdout, had an off year in ’42, hitting .305/21/114.

A rookie, twenty-five-year-old Johnny Lindell, who was the Minor League Player of the Year in ’41, made 23 appearances on the mound with a decent 3.76 ERA, but the following year moved to the outfield, a rare conversion that harkened back to Babe Ruth’s switch. McCarthy simply felt that the USC product, a Bill Essick signing, lacked big-league stuff, but saw his potential as an everyday player. Joe’s instincts were good: Lindell, a handsome
six foot four and 217 pounds, was a solid outfielder for seven seasons with the Yanks and a fan favorite as well. He led the league in total bases in 1944 when he hit .300/18/103. (Lindell would finish his career in 1953 as a pitcher, going 6–17 for the Pirates and Phillies.)

The Yankees, as well as other teams, had to deal with the possibility of an air raid during a game. Air-raid wardens were always present. Bulletins were placed throughout the park to instruct fans to “sit tight, follow the green line or the red line,” and to know where barrels of water, pails of sand, and fire extinguishers were. Fifteen thousand fans could be protected from bombs under the grandstand. No one would be permitted to leave in the event of a raid. SEE SCORECARD FOR ALERT INSTRUCTIONS, it said on the facing of the mezzanine. (It would seem to make the five-cent purchase worthwhile.)

The threat also led to one of the game’s most curious rules: In the event of an air raid or a bomb attack, whichever team led after five innings would be declared the winner.

Fortunately, there was no need to redefine “Bronx Bombers” over the coming years.

Prior to a home game on April 29, across the street from the Bronx County Courthouse at the Grand Concourse, a road divider was named Lou Gehrig Plaza, with Eleanor Gehrig, Lou’s parents, McCarthy, Dickey, and several teammates on hand to dedicate the plaque. Eleanor was dressed as an ambulance driver; she was in the process of working with the city to develop a fleet of Lou Gehrig ambulances with the number 4 painted on their sides. (The plaza was upgraded in 2009.)

Additionally,
Pride of the Yankees
was released during the season, starring Gary Cooper as Lou (a terrific casting decision), Teresa Wright as Eleanor, and Babe Ruth, Mark Koenig, Bill Dickey, and Bob Meusel as themselves. The movie, directed by Sam Wood and based on a Gehrig biography by Paul Gallico, was extremely well received and garnered eleven Oscar nominations. Many would watch the film over and over as the years passed, always moved by the presentation of Cooper/Gehrig’s farewell speech and his slow walk toward the dugout for the last time. It was one of those cultural events in America that took baseball to the mainstream, and in the process made a household name of Gehrig and greatly increased interest in ALS.

For Teresa Wright, making only her third film in a twenty-eight-feature-film career, it was just another contract assignment, and she admitted to
not being much of a fan. But in her later years she became an avid supporter, and was lovingly introduced at games and at the Yogi Berra Museum in the 2000s.

On August 21, Babe Ruth donned a Yankee uniform (with NY on the jersey, for the first time), and took to the field for the first time since his playing days. He was taking practice swings for a war bonds exhibition in which he would bat against Walter Johnson. Of the current team, he knew only the coach Earle Combs. He called him Kid.

Now forty-seven, Ruth suited up again on the twenty-third before 69,136 fans to bat against fifty-four-year-old Walter Johnson. On Johnson’s fifth pitch, Babe gave the fans what they wanted, a drive into the lower right-field stands. On the seventeenth and final pitch from Johnson, he hit one into the upper deck in right for the first time, and although the ball curved foul, he circled the bases, waved his cap, and saluted the crowd. Ruth and Johnson walked off together to a terrific ovation. The game raised some $80,000 for the army-navy relief fund. That would be Babe’s last trip around the bases at the House That Ruth Built.