Summer of '49: The Yankees and the Red Sox in Postwar America Read online

  Summer of ’49

  David Halberstam

  For David Fine

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PHOTO GALLERY

  A Biography of David Halberstam

  A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

  —JOSEPH CAMPBELL,

  The Hero with a Thousand Faces

  THE NEW YORK YANKEES OF 1949

  Casey Stengel—Manager

  THE BOSTON RED SOX OF 1949

  Joe McCarthy—Manager

  PROLOGUE

  IN BOSTON THE EXCITEMENT over the last two games of the 1948 season was unprecedented, even taking into account that city’s usual baseball madness. The fever was in the streets. On Saturday morning the crowd gathered early, not only inside Fenway Park, to watch the Red Sox and the Yankees in their early workouts but also outside the nearby Kenmore Hotel where the Yankees were staying—the better to get a close look at these mighty and arrogant gladiators who had done so much damage to the local heroes in the past. Such veteran Yankee players as Tommy Henrich and Joe DiMaggio loved big, high-pressure games like these. Henrich particularly enjoyed playing against the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Red Sox because the parks were so small that you could really see and hear the fans. Such intimacy was missing in the cathedrallike Yankee Stadium. It did not matter, Henrich thought, that the fans were rooting against you. What mattered was their passion, which was contagious to both teams. For some of the younger players, it was a bit unsettling. When Charlie Silvera, a young catcher just brought up from the minor leagues, saw the streets outside the hotel jammed with excited Boston fans, he felt like a Christian on his way to the Coliseum. Along with his buddies, Hank Bauer and Yogi Berra, he left the hotel ready to run this relatively good-natured gauntlet. The fans crowded around to tell them that the Sox were going to get them, that Ted (Ted Williams, of course, but in conversations this intimate, he was merely Ted) was going to eat Tommy Byrne alive. It was, thought Silvera, as if nothing else in the world matters except this game.

  What a glorious pennant race it was in 1948, with three teams battling almost to the last day. The Red Sox, the beloved Sox, had started slowly. They were eleven and a half games out on the last day of May. But the Boston fans did not lose faith, even if it was mixed in almost equal parts with cynicism. The Sox came back, took first place in late August, and stayed there for almost a month. Then the Cleveland Indians, with their marvelous pitching staff—including Bob Feller, the fastest pitcher in either league; Bob Lemon, judged by many hitters to be Feller’s equal; and a young rookie named Gene Bearden—made their challenge. The possibility of winning the pennant so electrified the Indians that near the end of the season Lou Boudreau, the young playing manager, had to ask the sportswriters not to come into the locker room. The players were so emotional, he said, that he feared a writer might overhear something said in anger, write it up, and an incident would be created. The writers, reflecting something about the journalistic mores of the time, all agreed.

  While Boston and Cleveland battled for first, the Yankees stayed just within striking distance. All three teams set attendance records, drawing among them more than 6.5 million fans (the Indians drew 2.6 million, the Yankees 2.37, and the Red Sox, in their much smaller ball park, 1.55 million). Newspapers throughout the country headlined the pennant race every day, and in countless offices everywhere men and women brought portable radios to work—for the games were still played in the afternoon then.

  The best player on each of the three teams was having a remarkable year: Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees, although hobbled by painful leg and foot injuries, was in his last great statistical year, and was in the process of driving in 155 runs; Ted Williams of Boston ended up hitting .369 with 127 runs batted in; and Lou Boudreau of the Indians led Williams for part of the summer and ended up hitting .355, 60 points above his career average. Williams, the greatest hitter of his era, hated to be behind anyone in a batting race. While Boudreau was slightly ahead of him, the Red Sox played a doubleheader with Chicago late in the season. That day Birdie Tebbetts, the Boston catcher, needled Williams: “Looks like the Frenchman’s got you beat this year, Ted,” he said. “The hell he has,” Williams answered. He went seven for eight, with three hits to the opposite field. The last time up, with six hits already under his belt and his average having edged above Boudreau’s, he yelled to Tebbetts, “This one’s for Ted,” and hit it out.

  With one week, or, more important, seven games, left in the season, the three teams were tied with identical records of 91-56. “They wanted a close race. Well, they’ve got it,” said Bucky Harris, the Yankee manager, speaking to reporters as the Yankees prepared to meet the Red Sox for a brief series in New York. “It couldn’t be any closer. But somebody has to drop tomorrow. Maybe two of us will be off the roof. But I’m not dropping my switch.”

  Then the Indians moved ahead; they continued to win while the Red Sox and Yankees faltered. On Thursday the New York Times headline observed: INDIANS NEAR PENNANT AS FELLER WINS. The Indians had a two-game lead, with only three games left.

  As the Yankees prepared to take on Boston at Fenway, the Indians played their last three against fifth-place Detroit. On Friday Cleveland took a 3-2 lead into the ninth inning behind Bob Lemon. But Lemon tired, and Detroit rallied to win 5-3. So the door had opened just slightly for either Boston or New York.

  Fenway was one of the smallest parks in the majors and every one of its 35,000 seats was taken on Saturday. The Boston management noted sadly that if they had had 100,000 seats they could have sold them all that day. In the first game at Fenway, the Red Sox beat the Yankees when Williams hit a long home run off Tommy Byrne. Rundown by a cold he seemed unable to shake—despite his use of penicillin, then still a miracle drug—Williams had clinched the batting title. There had been a special pleasure for Williams in getting the crucial home run off Byrne because Byrne normally tormented Williams every time he came up: “Hey, Ted, how’s the Boston press these days? Still screwing you. That’s a shame. ... I think you deserve better from them. ... By the way, what are you hitting? ... You don’t know? Goddamn, Ted, the last time I looked it up, it was three-sixty or something. Not bad for someone your age. ...” Williams, in desperation, would turn to Yogi Berra, the Yankee catcher, and say, “Yogi, can you get that crazy left-handed son of a bitch to shut up and throw the ball?”

  With the victory over the Yankees, the Red Sox still were a game out of first; to win a share of the pennant they needed to beat the Yankees in the final game. That night, the DiMaggio brothers—Joe, the center fielder of the Yankees, and Dominic, the center fielder of the Red Sox—drove together to Dominic’s house in suburban Wellesley. There was to be a family dinner that night for Dominic, who was scheduled to be married on October 7. Their parents had left San Francisco for a rare trip east to attend the wedding and to see the final games of the season as well. If the Red
Sox made the World Series, then the wedding would be postponed to October 17.

  For a long time it was quiet in the car—Joe could be reserved even with his family and closest friends and even in the best of times. “If he said hello to you,” his contemporary Hank Greenberg once said, “that was a long conversation.” This day, when his team had been eliminated from the pennant race, was not the best of times. Finally he turned to his younger brother and said, “You knocked us out today, but we’ll get back at you tomorrow—we’ll knock you out. I’ll take care of it personally.” Dominic pondered that for a moment. The role of being Joe DiMaggio’s younger brother had never been easy. Dominic chose his words carefully.

  “You’re forgetting I may have something to do with that tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be there too.”

  They continued the rest of the way in silence. The next day Joe tore the park apart; he got four hits including two doubles. One ball hit the short fence so hard that Dominic thought for a moment it would go right through. In the stands their mother turned to their father and said, “What’s our Joe trying to do? Beat our Dominic out of the World Series?” The Red Sox took an early 5-0 lead, but the Yankees, with DiMaggio leading the way, chipped away, and in the sixth inning, when Dominic led off, it was 5-4. Dominic caught hold of a fastball and hit it into the screen for a home run. Before the inning was over the Red Sox had increased their lead to 9-4.

  In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Red Sox ahead by five runs, Bucky Harris, the Yankee manager, waited until DiMaggio took his position in center field. Then he sent in a replacement. As DiMaggio limped off the field, something very rare happened, particularly for a ball park where the fans were as partisan as those at Fenway. The crowd of 35,000 rose as one to give the star outfielder of the hated Yankees a standing ovation. The cheering thundered on and on. Joe DiMaggio, a man who worked hard to conceal his emotions, was so touched by the ovation that he later referred to it as the single greatest thrill of his career. In the dugout, Dominic watched the scene with quiet pride. The Red Sox went on to win the game 10-5.

  In Cleveland the gods were kind to the Red Sox. The mighty Newhouser of Detroit beat the mighty Feller 7-1. So the long season, 154 games, was over, but the outcome was not decided. The Red Sox would meet the Indians in a special one-game playoff.

  Many of the Red Sox players assumed that Mel Parnell, the talented young rookie pitcher, would start for them in the playoff game. Parnell had had three days of rest; he was young, only twenty-six that summer; and he had enjoyed a wonderful rookie year, winning 15 and losing 8. Fifteen games for a rookie left-hander in Boston was remarkable enough, but the truth was, he might easily have won twenty. Parnell had been beaten so often in close games in which he had pitched well that the wives of some of the Boston players had given him some stockings with runs in them—the idea being that he needed those runs.

  In the spring of 1948, Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy, who was wary of rookies, had planned to send Parnell back to the minors. But near the end of spring he asked Birdie Tebbetts to catch Parnell in an exhibition game against the Yankees. Tebbetts called for a fastball, and Parnell threw a pitch that surprised him. Not only did it have speed but also exceptional action: Just as it reached the plate it seemed to slide sharply away from the right-handed hitter. Tebbetts called for the same pitch again, and again it seemed to jump away at the last moment. Parnell got through the inning easily, and the next two innings as well. Later, when the Red Sox were up, Tebbetts turned to McCarthy: “Joe, you said you were sending the kid down,” Tebbetts began. “Shouldn’t we?” McCarthy asked. “No,” said Tebbetts, “he’s ready now.” “Okay,” McCarthy said. So 1948 became Mel Parnell’s rookie year, and a wildly successful one at that.

  Despite the fact that Fenway, with its short left-field fence, was considered something of a coffin for left-handers, Parnell quickly proved he could pitch well and fearlessly in his home ball park. He had a 2.29 earned-run average in Fenway, compared to 4.13 on the road. Three of his victories had come against the Indians, a team loaded with right-handed power hitters—a sure sign that his ball was harder on right-handers. He might well have had four victories against the Indians, if not for a dubious umpire’s call on June 8 in a game in which Parnell had been matched up with Gene Bearden—a brilliant pitching duel in Fenway. With one man on, Lou Boudreau hit a sharp line drive toward the right-field line. In the eyes of almost everyone there the ball hooked foul and into the stands long before it reached the foul pole. A fan who was obviously sitting in foul territory caught the ball and held it up. But in Fenway the stands along the base line jut out, and Charlie Berry, the umpire covering the play, ran out and somehow called it fair, a two-run home run.

  There was no instant replay in those days, but this was one of those truly terrible moments when the entire ball park knew that an umpire had blown a crucial call. The fan who was waving the ball, and the fans around him, all in foul territory, started waving handkerchiefs. Parnell raced over to Berry. “Charlie,” he said, “it can’t be a home run-it didn’t even go past the foul pole.” “I made my call and it’s a home run and that’s that,” Berry yelled at him. Parnell then raced over to Ed Hurley, the home-plate umpire, and yelled, “Ed, you saw it—it’s obviously a foul ball.” Hurley answered with the words that crush a player: “It’s not my call.” Berry must have lost the ball as he ran to right field, Parnell decided. He tried one more protest to Berry. “Get out of here and pitch,” the umpire said. Those were the game’s only runs, and Cleveland won 2-0. Since the two teams would end the season with identical records, the memory of that call lasted a long time, with Parnell, his teammates, and their fans.

  Parnell himself fully expected to start in the playoff game. His family came up from New Orleans and went out to dinner with him. Afterward Patrick Parnell told his son to get a good night’s sleep because he was about to pitch the biggest game of his life. Mel Parnell went to bed before nine and got to the ball park early the next day. Much to his surprise, he found out he was not pitching against the Indians. Joe McCarthy, a very conservative manager, took him aside and said, “Mel, I’ve changed my mind. The wind is blowing out, and I’m going to go with a right-hander.” Even more astonishing to Parnell was his choice: a veteran right-hander named Denny Galehouse, who had been used mostly in relief all season. McCarthy’s reasoning was simple: Galehouse was a veteran, Parnell was a rookie; Galehouse was a right-hander, Parnell a lefty. In addition, earlier in the season in a game against the Indians, Parnell had started and gotten only one man out. Galehouse came in and gave up only two hits in the remaining eight and two-thirds innings. Since then, in two other appearances, the Indians had cuffed Galehouse around, but McCarthy’s mind was made up. Parnell was wounded. He knew he was young, but he was confident of his abilities.

  Among the other players there was a low rumbling of first disbelief and then discontent when the news made its way through the dugout. Among those who were very surprised was Matt Batts, a young backup catcher who had been in the bullpen the previous day. Not only did Batts think Parnell a better pitcher, but during the difficult 10-5 final victory over the Yankees, Galehouse had been warming up constantly—the equivalent of a six-inning game, Batts thought. Galehouse, he thought, was plain worn-out.

  Lou Boudreau, the Cleveland manager, thought that McCarthy was up to some elaborate trick, that perhaps Galehouse would start, throw to one batter, and then Parnell would come in. He suspected that Parnell was warming up in some dark, secret place. But it was not a trick, and Galehouse, who had not had a very good year (forty years later Mel Parnell knew exactly what Denny Gatehouse’s record was that year: 8 and 8), did not pitch particularly well. The Indians won, 8-3, behind the brilliant pitching of young Gene Bearden.

  Bearden threw a particularly bewildering knuckle ball that seemed to dance in every direction. The playoff victory was Bearden’s twentieth of the year, and it made him Rookie of the Year, just ahead of Parnell. The next year the Red Sox batt
ers, like others in the American League, learned how to deal with Bearden’s knuckler. They moved up to the very front of the batters box and swung before it began to dance. Gene Bearden never again won more than eight games.

  Denny Galehouse never started another game, and he pitched only two more innings in the majors. That playoff game remained a sore point with Red Sox fans. They had always thought that McCarthy, who was a former Yankee manager after all, had never fit in very well in Boston. One sportswriter, Jack Conway of the Boston Evening American, reported that he had received five thousand letters criticizing McCarthy and suggesting that Galehouse be traded. To many Red Sox fans it seemed part of a long, dark history, and years later mention of the 1948 season brought back not memories of Ted Williams’s heroics against the Yankees, but of McCarthy choosing Galehouse over Parnell (“the immortal Denny Galehouse” in the words of Martin Nolan, eight years old at the time and today the editor of the editorial page of the Boston Globe).

  Boston’s final two victories over the Yankees had ended, for the moment, one of the most intense rivalries in professional baseball. It would have to be continued in the summer of 1949. The Red Sox were a young team. Their fans were disappointed but not heartbroken, and they looked forward with considerable optimism to the coming year. There was no doubt that Cleveland had been lucky and that it would be hard for so many of its players to repeat such exceptional performances. As for the Yankees, they appeared to be aging. The great DiMaggio’s legs were clearly giving out. So, perhaps, 1949 would belong to Boston.

  CHAPTER 1

  IN THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY following World War II, professional baseball mesmerized the American people as it never had before and never would again. Baseball, more than almost anything else, seemed to symbolize normalcy and a return to life in America as it had been before Pearl Harbor. The nation clearly hungered for that. When Bob Feller returned from the navy to pitch in late August 1945, a Cleveland paper headlined the event: THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.