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

Much of the good feeling in the Red Sox camp seemed to come from Ted Williams. He was at once a star and a little kid, eager to be back at that which he loved best after some six months away. Like many of his teammates he was a serious fisherman, but unlike them he didn’t use the time in Florida as a means of getting out on the water. For him, when spring training started fishing ended; he became a full-time baseball player. This spring he seemed more at ease than ever. When writers pressed him for his goals, he talked about leading the American League in hitting, which he had already done four times. “No one but Cobb has done it more than four times,” he said. “If I can win it this year I’ll be ahead of Harry Heilmann [who also had done it four times]. I’ll be second in the record book. There’s no point in even thinking of catching up with Cobb.”

  Matt Batts caught a lot of batting practice that spring, and he loved catching when Williams was up. Batts had barely made the team as a rookie the previous year, and yet here he was with the great star, talking to him as though they were equals. “Goddamn Batts, did you see that,” Williams would say as he lashed a ball on a line to right. In would come another pitch. Again a swing, again a line drive. “Batts, I’m going to tell you a secret—I’m good and I’m getting better.” In came another pitch. Again he swung, again the ball hurtled deep into the outfield. “I can’t stand it, I’m so good,” he said. Then, as the pitcher got ready, he would say, “Batts, I’m going to show you something.” This time he swung and the ball sailed into left field. “See that, Batts—I can hit to left field. I can hit there any damn time I want. But my money’s in right field—that’s what they pay me to do.” He would take one more swing, Batts remembered, hit it again, and leave the batter’s box most reluctantly. “Goddamn, but this is fun,” he would say. “I could do this all day—and they pay me for it.” Batts thought: He makes it easier to remember that baseball was supposed to be fun.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE YANKEE CAMP IN spring training that year was not nearly so harmonious. There was a new manager, Casey Stengel, and the veteran players were suspicious of him, in part because they were still angry that Bucky Harris had been fired (George Weiss, the general manager, had thought him too lax in his control of the players). Also, Stengel brought with him a reputation as something of a buffoon. He came by that reputation honestly, for as a young man he had blended love of laughter with love of the game. There were many famous Stengelisms. One was the time he had barnstormed with a team dressed up as a hayseed, to mix in with the rural crowd watching the game. Suddenly the hayseed came out of the crowd, claiming he could do better. An argument ensued between him and the uniformed players. Reluctantly the players let him bat. The pitcher grooved the ball, and Stengel did do better. On another occasion he was playing the outfield when he spied a bird near him. He caught it, put it under his hat, and waited for the appropriate moment, which came when he made a good running catch. As the crowd cheered, he tipped his hat and the bird flew out. But his most memorable moment of all, perhaps, occurred during the 1923 World Series; playing for the Giants, he hit his second home run against the Yankees. That was astonishing since he was not known as a power hitter. As he trotted around the bases he thumbed his nose at the Yankee bench, for the Yankees had never treated him with great respect. Then, as he rounded third, he blew them a kiss.

  The appointment of a man who was famous for his practical jokes was not popular with the staid Yankees. Joe DiMaggio told Arthur Daley of the Times, “I’ve never seen such a bewildered guy in my life. He doesn’t seem to know what it’s all about.” Curt Gowdy, a young broadcaster, found himself in the men’s room with the Yankees’ new manager, and he introduced himself. The manager, hearing that Gowdy was a broadcaster, immediately put in a pitch for a friend of his as an announcer. Gowdy answered that he was so new himself, he doubted he could help anyone else. “Hey,” said Stengel, then fifty-eight years old, “we’re both rookies.”

  After suffering through years of McCarthy’s disdain, the sportswriters saw Stengel as a blessing. He always wanted to talk. During spring training he played along with a gag on John Drebinger of the Times, one of the more senior writers. Drebby used a hearing aid. The writers held a special press conference with Stengel, at which the manager mouthed the words instead of saying them. The other writers dutifully took notes. Soon Drebinger was cursing his hearing aid, shaking his head, and saying, “And I just got new batteries.” It was something that would never have happened in the McCarthy era.

  If the veterans were having a hard time trying to feel their way around Stengel, then for the rookies in camp it was even worse. Jerry Coleman, a young second baseman, was a rookie that spring, and he lived in constant terror. He had been a marine dive-bomber pilot in World War II, flying fifty-seven missions in fighters in the Solomon Islands. But spring training was harder on his nerves. He was both married and broke. He and his wife, Louise, were desperately short of money. They had driven to Florida in the flashy yellow Buick convertible of Clarence Marshall, a teammate who was just as broke as Coleman. Coleman carried in his pocket a cashier’s check for three hundred dollars, which represented his entire savings from his winter job selling clothes in San Francisco. That was to last through six weeks of spring training, augmented by a weekly stipend of twenty-five dollars. By bringing his young wife to training camp, Coleman was violating tradition: Wives were family, families were pleasure, and a rookie at the Yankee camp was engaged in a life-and-death proposition—he was not yet a member of the team. Charlie Silvera, a young catcher who had played with Coleman in sandlot baseball in San Francisco, had been told not to bring his wife to spring training; not until 1950 would his family be welcome.

  Coleman found spring training both exciting and frightening. He was with the Yankees off a weak season at Newark, where he had hit only .251, and was trying to play second base, which was a new position. There were not many slots on the Yankees for those who hit .250 in the minors. He was constantly aware of the odds against him, and of how much he had invested in this moment. Here he was at the very edge of his dream. It was as if this were a favorite movie he knew by heart, and now instead of merely watching it he was acting in it as well. He was surrounded by his heroes. There was Tommy Henrich, the consummate professional, taking his time getting into shape, absolutely confident of his skills. At first, all of Henrich’s hits were going to left field, and that surprised Coleman because Henrich was a notorious pull hitter. Then he realized what Henrich was doing: He wanted to see the ball at first, and make solid contact. Then he would worry about pulling the ball. All he wanted at first was his stroke.

  One thing Coleman felt sure of was that he was in the best shape of his life. He owed that in no small part to Bill Skiff, who had been his manager at Newark. Skiff had told him, “Jerry, if you want to make the majors, you’re going to have to do two things: You’re going to have to learn how to use your bat—strengthen yourself—and you’re going to have to stop smoking.” Coleman understood the first suggestion immediately, for he knew he was not very strong, even by comparison with most infielders. But the second part puzzled him. Stop smoking? Why? “Because it’s holding your weight down,” Skiff said. “None of these guys know it, but it cuts their appetites. It’s habit forming, and soon they’d rather smoke than eat, and they lose weight and then they lose power. Some of them can afford it, but you, you’re as skinny as they come. You can’t afford it.” Skiff gave him another hard, appraising look. “You drink, Jerry?” he asked. “Not much,” Coleman answered. “During the season,” he said, “drink two beers a day after a game, whether you like it or not. You need the fluid—it’ll keep you from losing weight, and it’ll help you relax.”

  So Coleman had immediately given up smoking, and his appetite had improved. In addition, he had a friend make him a leaded bat with four pounds of weights in it. He worked out with it all winter, and when he arrived at spring training, he felt stronger than ever, and, even more important, his hands were already hard and calloused.

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bsp; Mostly, though, Coleman worried. He had to beat out the regular second baseman, George Stirnweiss, who had shed a good deal of weight over the winter and was having a good spring. In addition, there were other second basemen from the minors, and there was even the possibility of a trade, although the Yankees traditionally traded for pitchers, not infielders. There was also the possibility of a switch of position. One day there was a flurry of stories in the newspapers that Billy Johnson, who had been the third baseman and was being challenged by Bobby Brown, might play at second.

  The rookies were emotionally, if not physically, apart from the others in spring training. The Yankee veterans did not treat them like fraternity pledges, the way veterans on some of the other clubs did. But the presence of rookies created certain emotional tensions. On one hand, a rookie might take a veteran’s job; on the other hand, a good rookie might strengthen the team, and thereby help ensure a World Series check. That meant that the rookies were watched but not helped; they were spoken to but not with. Once in 1946 during spring training, a group of veterans was talking in the locker room and a rookie joined in. The conversation came to a complete halt. Spud Chandler, the veteran pitcher, turned to him and said, “Fresh fucking rookie.” The rookie was silenced immediately and for the rest of the spring.

  Bobby Brown was another young player trying to win a regular job—at third and short. Brown’s situation seemed even more difficult than Coleman’s. Billy Johnson, the man he would replace, was immensely popular with the other players, someone who reflected the old-fashioned verities. Brown was an early bonus baby, which set him apart from the start; even before he played his first game he had been given big money merely to sign—what some players made as salary after six or seven years. In addition, he had been to medical school, and he did not drink, smoke, or chase girls. At the press conference where his signing was announced, Larry MacPhail, one of the Yankee owners, had spoken so extravagantly about his talents—what a fine young man he was, and what a brilliant young doctor he was going to become—that Will Wedge of the Sun finally asked, “Larry, are you signing him as a player or a doctor?”

  As it turned out, neither Brown nor Coleman had anything to worry about. The suspicions about Brown quickly eased because he was a formidable hitter. He and Johnson shared third base. Joe Page came up with a nickname for him: “Quack.” Coleman was also hitting consistently and had never felt stronger. He choked up so far on the bat that his teammates named him “Half-a-bat.” But he felt he did not know how to play second base—he didn’t know how to make the pivot. He was certain he was going to be sent back to Newark with orders to learn to play second. The veterans watching him were impressed. Phil Rizzuto, the veteran shortstop, knew from the very start: Coleman was a natural; his play around second was instinctive, combining exceptional grace with acrobatic skill. He also threw a soft, feathery ball, which made things easier for Rizzuto. Even more important, Coleman had exceptional range, and this augmented Rizzuto’s range; it meant that with certain right-handed hitters, Coleman could play very near second base, and that allowed Rizzuto to play deeper in the hole between short and third. Rizzuto was thrilled by the prospect of playing every day with Coleman and was amused that the one person who did not seem to know how well he was doing was Coleman himself.

  Rizzuto could understand the rookie terror that seemed to engulf Coleman. It was always hard on rookies in the spring, he thought, although in the nine years since he had broken in, there had been a gradual improvement in the way veterans treated them. When Rizzuto had first come up, at age twenty-three, he was the smallest man in camp. They weren’t even going to let him into the clubhouse. Only a last-minute intercession by Lefty Gomez had saved him. He was perceived as the possible usurper of Frank Crosetti’s job, and the Crow was a popular veteran. Rizzuto was given a locker between Red Ruffing and Bill Dickey, two immense, powerful men, particularly in the eyes of someone as small as Rizzuto. Neither said a word to him. Days passed in silence. Even worse, during batting practice no one would let him hit. Whenever it was his turn, some husky veteran would muscle him aside. It stopped after a week only because Joe DiMaggio came to his defense. “Let the kid hit,” he said, and the harassment was over. Later that year, after Rizzuto was established as the regular shortstop, Joe McCarthy took him aside and said, “Rizzuto, I saw what was happening out there. I could have stopped it anytime I wanted. But I wanted to see what kind of stuff you were made of. The truth is, you should have been more aggressive. How are you going to deal with these other teams if you can’t deal with your own teammates?” Now Rizzuto watched Coleman with sympathy. He’ll be the last one to find out, Rizzuto thought.

  One day near the end of spring, Joe Trimble, a sportswriter for the Daily News, came up to Coleman and asked him to autograph a baseball. It was the ball signed by all the regular players who had made the big club. “Are you sure you want me to sign this, Mr. Trimble?” he asked. “Hey kid,” Trimble answered, “relax, you’re going to make the club.” That was the way Coleman found out he was a Yankee. He would be paid $7,500 a year instead of $5,000 if he was still with the Yankees on June 1, which was the big day. His promotion ended one phase of terror and began another, the haunting fear that at some critical moment in some crucial game he would fail and cost the Yankees the game and possibly the pennant.

  The most serious problem for the Yankees in 1949 was that its famous stars were clearly aging. The team had been known to fans and writers in the late thirties and forties by the names of its three great outfielders—Keller, Henrich, and, of course, the greatest of them all, DiMaggio. The three had constituted one of the best and most versatile outfields of modern baseball, and the names were given as one might give the batting order: Henrich-Keller-DiMaggio. But now Henrich was thirty-six, Keller would turn thirty-three during the season, and DiMaggio would turn thirty-five at the end of it. Keller’s body was already giving out on him; he had ruptured a disk in his back during the 1947 season, and had not received proper medical care because of management’s desire to keep him in the pennant race. His lower body had been allowed to atrophy: in 1949 he was experiencing constant back problems and could play only part-time.

  Even more upsetting were DiMaggio’s injuries. It was clear that his body was wearing down. He was thirty-four, and had wartime not interrupted his career, this would have been his fourteenth year as a major leaguer. He had played hard, punishing his body more than most bigger men do, particularly in the way he slid into the bases. Now his body was rebelling. His left heel was operated on in January 1947, and a three-inch bone spur was taken out. He arrived at camp that year weak and underweight, with his leg muscles atrophying. Then, in 1948, he started to feel acute pain in his right heel in the second week of the season. An X ray of it showed a bone spur about an eighth of an inch long. Bone spurs are not unusual for people who are on their feet a great deal, nor are they necessarily dangerous. But for someone who could not rest his feet, and who instead aggravated the problem with hard running, stopping, and sliding, they were a source of almost unbearable pain. DiMaggio should have gone to the hospital immediately.

  But the Yankees were the defending champions, and DiMaggio was their most important player. So he played. The problems with his feet forced him into compensatory injuries and his knees and thighs ached by the end of the season. In November 1948, the season finally over, he underwent an operation to remove the spurs. He stayed on crutches for six weeks in order to rest his foot. When he finally tried to walk without the crutches, he felt better. But in February 1949 the pain started to return. As spring training was about to begin, it was obvious that either he was recovering more slowly than in the past, or the operation had not been a complete success. Times reporter John Drebinger was already speculating in print, whether DiMaggio would ever play again. “It is,” he wrote, “a pretty solid conviction that DiMaggio will never again be the DiMaggio of old.”

  Upon arrival at the Yankee camp in Florida, DiMaggio was in severe pain. He was flown
immediately to Baltimore. There his doctor said the pain came from a normal thickening of the heel and would eventually disappear. Casey Stengel, worried for the first time, told DiMaggio to work out according to his own schedule. He played only forty-three innings that spring, and never hit a ball hard. Every day the pain got worse and limited his activities even further. He could not dig in when he came to bat. Because of his inability to put pressure on his heel, his leg muscles were atrophying once again. DiMaggio’s doctor and one of the trainers made adjustments on his shoes, and he tried to work out a new schedule, one that would allow him to hit while minimizing the amount of running.

  DiMaggio had become a desperate man, yet he kept his desperation to himself, as was his manner. His career hung in the balance. He tried everything: whirlpool baths, heat treatments, sponge rubber heels as special cushions, and, finally, the removal of the spikes from his right shoe. By early April he could not run at all, and on April 13 there was the most ominous headline imaginable in The New York Times: JOE DIMAGGIO TO MISS YANKEE OPENER.

  As the pain grew worse, mere walking became painful, and the measures to protect him became more elaborate. The Yankee trainers concocted a complicated new device for his street shoes—a leather arch support, nailed between the ball of the foot and the heel on the outside of the shoe. As the team swung through Texas prior to going north for the start of the season, it became less a matter of whether he could play, and more a matter of whether he could walk. At a game in Beaumont, Texas, he limped off the field after a few innings, his face contorted by the pain.

  DiMaggio was then subjected to four hours of tests. He emerged from the prolonged session with the doctor, in the journalistic vernacular of that day, “solemn and grim visaged.” The condition of DiMaggio’s heel was “hot,” that is, it was hot to the touch. There was much conjecture in the daily newspapers about whether the Yankees, a notoriously cheap organization, would pay DiMaggio’s salary for the year. Del Webb, one of the Yankees owners, a man then in his seventies, had flown to Texas for the exhibition games there, and he accompanied DiMaggio to his meeting with the doctor. During the session the doctor took X rays of the backs of both Webb and DiMaggio. Later he showed both photos to Webb. “This,” he said, holding up the two photos, “is the X ray of the body of a young man, and this is one of the body of an older man.” Webb said that was perfectly understandable. “Unfortunately,” the doctor continued, “the X ray of the body of the young man is yours, and the one of the older man is your young player’s.”