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

  After Keller’s senior baseball season at Maryland, the scouts had moved in quickly on him. There were other offers, but to Keller there was something special about the Yankees; the mystique because of Ruth and Gehrig was already there. The Yankees gave him a bonus of $2,500, plus $500 so that he could go back to Maryland after the season and get his degree. He was ticketed to play at a lower-level Yankee team in Norfolk, but he hit so well in spring training that the Yankees assigned him to their AAA team in Newark.

  At Newark Keller was an immediate star and helped lead the Newark Bears to two pennants in 1937 and 1938. On the occasion of the Bears’ winning the International League pennant in 1937, Colonel Ruppert invited the entire Newark team to New York City for a party. Keller turned to Hy Goldberg, a local sportswriter, and said, “You know, Hy, it’ll be the first time I’ll have been to New York.” Goldberg was stunned. “Charlie,” he answered, “it’s the greatest city in the world and it’s only twenty minutes away and you’re here a whole season—how can you not have visited it?” “Oh, you know,” Keller replied, “I’m a farm boy—I don’t have any need for a city like that.” Alien the city was, and alien it remained. There were too many people and there was not enough space. He thought it was particularly hard on his children. “Daddy,” one of them said, “there isn’t enough grass here, and when there is grass, the people won’t let you play on it.” That summed up the city, as far as he was concerned.

  His teammates admired Keller’s strength of character. In the absence of DiMaggio, he was a senior player, and he had called his teammates together to exhort them: “If we play like we’ve played the last three games, sloppy and dumb, we’re going to be the laughingstock of this league. We’re going to be a joke to other teams because we’re one team with Joe and another without him.” Such words coming from Keller were sobering. Everyone listened. He is telling us, Henrich thought, that we are in danger of being perceived as a one-man team. There was shame in that.

  CHAPTER 3

  TOMMY HENRICH WAS STUNNED by Charlie Keller’s talk. The burden was his, he decided. He would have to treat every game as if it were a big game. When he was a rookie he had talked about the pressure of World Series games with Red Rolfe, the third baseman. Rolfe had said, “When you play in a World Series, you either accept the challenge and do better than you normally do, or the pressure gets to you and you fall beneath your normal level.” More than any member of the Yankees except DiMaggio, Henrich had a reputation for rising to the occasion. His nickname, used again and again by Mel Allen on the radio, was “Old Reliable.” Henrich thought often about why he did well in critical situations. Part of it, he was sure, was his ability to concentrate. An equal part was pure adrenaline. The best analogy he knew was driving a car headed for an accident. Suddenly your reflexes were sharper, you saw better, and you had quicker reactions. Some people fell apart under pressure; others could use it constructively. Seemingly by luck, he was one of the latter. So was Bobby Brown, the young bonus player. For a million dollars in a tough situation, Henrich thought, Bobby Brown will not choke. He might cut down on his swing a little, he might protect the plate a little more carefully, but he would also become more determined.

  Vic Raschi, a Yankee pitcher, was convinced that Henrich had learned concentration from playing with DiMaggio, and that he emulated DiMaggio’s totality of concentration. For Henrich was unsurpassed as a clutch player: more dangerous in big games than small games, more dangerous in late innings than early ones, and more dangerous with men on base than with the bases empty. Just the year before, he had tied a major-league record of four grand-slam home runs in a season, and had almost broken that record when one of his late-season hits was called foul, a bad call in the eyes of most of the Yankees. Within the league he was known as one of the two or three best clutch hitters in baseball, a man who killed fastballs. (“How are you going to pitch to Henrich?” Zach Taylor, the St. Louis Browns manager, had asked Fred Sanford, then pitching for the Browns, in one close game in 1948. “I’m going to give him four fastballs,” Sanford answered. “What the hell does that mean?” Taylor asked. “It means I’m going to walk him on four pitches,” Sanford answered. “He hits me like he owns me.”)

  Henrich had always been a good player, one whose value belied the more ordinary quality of his statistics. He had come up through hard times, when Ed Barrow ran the team. After one season Henrich asked Barrow for a raise. Barrow replied by citing Henrich’s batting average. It was quite disappointing, Barrow said. In fact, he was thinking of cutting him for the neat year. Henrich stood his ground. “What do you want, a higher batting average for me personally or value to the team? Every day, every at-bat, I do what’s good for the team, I move runners around, and I knock runners in. But if you want batting average I’ll give that to you next year. It’ll weaken the team, but you can have what you want.” Barrow recanted and Henrich got a raise of $2,000.

  But later, after Henrich sustained a serious knee injury, Barrow announced his unilateral decision of what Henrich’s salary would be. Henrich protested, but Barrow explained to Henrich that he was damaged goods: “I’m afraid there’s no guarantee that you’ll be as good as you once were,” Barrow said. “I think your job is to try and get yourself in shape and come to us in the spring and prove that you’re worth this money we’re paying you.”

  After the war, Henrich became, in his teammate Charlie Keller’s view, a much better player. With maturity came confidence and a better sense of the game. Now, with DiMaggio out, Stengel was batting him cleanup. That had not happened before the war. He constantly studied and tried to refine his skills. When it was windy he liked to take extra fielding practice with Frank Shea, the best fungo hitter on the team. Most outfielders hated to practice fungoes on a windy day, because the wind made them look clumsy, but Henrich knew that that was precisely when he needed such practice.

  Throughout his career, Henrich could be counted on to get the game-winning hit. There were no statistics kept in that department in that era, but it was an extraordinary performance: a player systematically rising above his level to help his team win. Henrich was not that strong, he was not that fast, and his arm was not that powerful. “You’ve lost some of your speed, Tommy,” one of his teammates once told him. He answered, “I never had the speed I used to have but I get the job done.” He had no illusions about himself or his abilities.

  He epitomized the ballplayers born and raised in the America that preceded the New Deal. After World War II, in the homes of the large, burgeoning middle class, it was a virtual assumption that even mildly ambitious white males could go to college, even if their parents had not. But Henrich’s generation had come from an America where a few people were rich, a few more were middle class, and a vast number were poor. Those who were rich stayed rich, and those who were poor stayed poor, for the most part, so no opportunity to get ahead could be squandered. At the start of the Depression, the average American salary was about $1,300 a year; in 1949, with the new postwar affluence just starting to affect the country, the average yearly salary was $3,000. The salaries ballplayers received were relatively small by comparison with what they would soon make—perhaps $15,000 for an average player on an average team. But this figure represented something dramatic: entry into the middle class.

  Money could be saved, homes and farms could be bought, children’s college funds could be started. Many of the players did save as much money as possible. In that era the athletes played through injuries for fear that if they stayed out too long, no matter how legitimate the reason, someone else might take their jobs. (Earl Johnson was a rookie with Boston in 1940, and he remembered coming in one morning and seeing Joe Cronin, the player-manager, stretched out on the trainer’s table. The team doctor was operating on him—removing hemorrhoids, it turned out. When the operation was finished the doctor bandaged up Cronin, who then went out and played both ends of a doubleheader.)

  Tommy Henrich, in his minor-league career, was always aware of how luc
ky he was to have this special skill that had lifted him out of the masses. He never forgot that when he signed his first minor-league contract, he was working at Republic Steel as a typist for $22.50 a week. That was not much, but, he liked to point out, in the Depression there were heads of families who made less. Baseball had been his one chance to get ahead in life. In the middle of his minor-league career, he had played for New Orleans, which even then was a party city. Ballplayers could always find someone to carouse with who would buy a drink for them. Because of that Henrich deliberately went to the ball park each day in his worst clothes, and he wore slippers instead of shoes. That was his way of fighting temptation. It was not about morality, it was about energy. The summer heat in New Orleans was deadly. An ordinary player could lose five or six pounds in one game. It took all of Henrich’s energy to play his best. When his teammates asked him to go out with them after a game, he pointed to his shabby clothes; soon they stopped asking.

  Of his four grandparents, two had been born in Germany and two were born here. He had been raised in a predominantly German neighborhood in Massillon, Ohio. German was still taught in the schools when he was a boy. His father, Edward Henrich, had been a good sandlot baseball player, and was secretly thrilled when his son Tom decided to try a career in baseball. As a boy Henrich played softball all day long. He later decided that one of the problems with Little League baseball as it developed after the war was that it became too organized and regimented. There was too much emphasis on manager dads and wearing uniforms. Once, after he made the big leagues, he asked his teammate Joe Gordon, “Joe, did you ever get fifty hits in one day?” Gordon thought about it, and said yes he did. “How?” Henrich asked, knowing the answer. “Well, if you were the best hitter, and you didn’t have enough kids for two teams, you hit until you were out, so you could get fifty hits.” “Same with me,” Henrich said.

  It had started when he was in first grade. He came out for recess, and his older brother, Eddie, who was in the fifth grade, was playing sock ball with his friends. In a poorer America, the ball was a knotted sock. “Can I get into the game?” Tommy asked. No, Eddie said, for his brother was too young. “Oh, come on, let him play, Eddie,” someone else said. So he played and got a hit his first time up. From then on he was always in a game. His parents did not mind—their kids were out of the house all day long. There was no trouble except for the occasional broken window. Tommy and his brother, Eddie, often played right in front of their house, which was fine except that their mother knew exactly where they were and could call them in for dinner whenever she wanted: Thomas, Edward, dinner! Those words could break a game off at a crucial moment. Soon they switched to a nearby park, where she could not see them. But if they got back after dinner had been served, it was their job to heat it up and then do their own dishes.

  If Tommy hung around long enough, and if they needed a player, he sometimes got to play with the seniors, who were sixteen and seventeen, and even with the adults in their games. Henrich had a clear memory of the first time he was ever let into a senior game. He was sixteen and it was a considerable event. He had asked the captain what position he was going to bat in. “Tom,” the captain had said, “You’ll bat eighth—you’re my second cleanup hitter.” “I was so green,” he remembered long after, “that I believed him, too.”

  He played surprisingly little hardball then. He was smart, able, and hard-working, but, because of his background, there was no chance for college. Gradually he became too old for sandlot softball. When he turned twenty he was playing center field for a local hardball team for the first time. It wasn’t even a semipro team, for semipro ball around Massillon was good—a lot of former major leaguers who could make more money playing for industrial teams than they could in the majors. Outlaw players, they were called. Henrich’s team was the Prince Horn Dairy. They played on Saturdays and Sundays. Prince Horn did not pay the players, and if they practiced at all it was on weeknights after dinner. There was no time for anything else; all of them had jobs during the day.

  A scout for the Indians named Bill Bradley saw him play, and in September 1933 he talked to Henrich about signing with the Indians. At first Henrich didn’t take him seriously, but Bradley was insistent: This was real. He arranged a meeting with Billy Evans, the Cleveland general manager. Henrich was offered a hundred dollars a month to play at Zanesville in Class C. He was stunned. His only memory of talking was that he said, “Yes, sir.” He never dreamed of playing pro ball, and now here he was signing a contract.

  Henrich worked hard to stay in shape during the winter by playing basketball and hockey, and when spring arrived he drove to Zanesville, nervous about his tryout. He never forgot his first time up—how tight he was, how much he was concentrating on the need to get a hit. He was sure that the pitcher would be very fast because this was the pros. As a result, he swung way ahead of the pitch. Then he forced himself to relax and just go with the pitch. He was the last player cut from the roster; he had hit well, near .330, but they sent him down to their Class D team in Monessen, Pennsylvania. At Monessen his pay was cut to $80 a month, but he had a good year, hitting .326 and 15 home runs. He knew he was going to go up the ladder. The next year he was raised to $125 a month, played at Zanesville, and did well again. Now, for the first time, there was a real possibility of playing in the major leagues. A player named Lee Gamble from Monessen had made the majors, and Henrich did not think that Gamble was that good. The year after that, 1936, he was in New Orleans, and he loved being there. He played for Larry Gilbert, who was like a father to him. When he went to bat the first time that year, the first pitch was a curve. Henrich thought to himself, Oh a curve on the very first pitch—I’m with the big boys now. He hit. 340 that season, and he loved it all—he simply could not wait to get to the ball park. Years later, Red Smith, the great sportswriter, would say of Henrich that he had never known of any other player who took more sheer pleasure in playing the game.

  There was a mistake in his contract, a glitch. The Indians were accused of trying to cover him up in the minor leagues. By chance he became a free agent that winter and suddenly there were seven other major-league teams trying to sign him, including the New York Yankees. As a boy he had always loved the Yankees. When he was eight years old he had bounced a rubber ball off the front steps in an invented game. If he caught the ball, the batter was out. If he missed it, the runner got on. It was the Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig who always won.

  The team that wanted to sign him most desperately was the St. Louis Browns. They not only offered more money but guaranteed his father that he would play every day. The Yankees made no such commitment. But it was the Yankees he chose—it was the team that all the best players wanted to join because of those magical ingredients: tradition, class, and excellence. The Browns were forty-four and a half games out of first that year. “The Browns will play you every day, Tom,” his father had countered. “But suppose I’m a good ballplayer and I end up with the Browns,” he answered, “then I’ll always be unhappy and I’ll always blame myself for not going with the Yankees. I’ll always wonder whether I should have bet a little more on myself.” His father listened and told him to bet on himself and sign with the Yankees. Tom Henrich never doubted that he had made the right choice.

  That summer Joseph Lelyveld was a sixth-grader in New York City. A serious Yankee fan, he owned some thirty books on baseball. All his allowance went to the Sporting News and assorted baseball magazines, and his most prized possession of all was an autographed copy of Joe DiMaggio’s autobiography, Lucky to Be a Yankee. He knew all the baseball statistics, past and present. He collected cards, and in his room, on the bulletin board, were autographed photos of the Yankee team that were bought at the Stadium.

  When he took piano lessons in 1948, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he found out that his teacher’s apartment was near that of the great Babe Ruth. After his lesson, he would run outside the apartment building at Eighty-third and Riverside, hoping for a glimpse of the Yan
kee slugger. Ruth, in failing health at the time, never did make an appearance.

  He had become interested in baseball in 1946 when his family had moved to New York from the Midwest. Lonely and unsure of himself, in a new school where the kids seemed to be much tougher, he found order and symmetry in the universe of baseball as he did not in the world around him. Besides, not very far from where he lived was Yankee Stadium. His father, later a prominent rabbi in the civil rights movement, was certainly not a fan. His parents tolerated his obsession, but did not encourage it. They hoped he would grow out of it.

  Technically his favorite player was DiMaggio, the greatest of Yankee stars, but DiMaggio was a god, far too great to identify with. So he chose Tommy Henrich as his favorite player. Henrich was clearly one of Mel Allen’s favorites—Old Reliable, in Allen’s phrase. The articles about him in Sport magazine were always complimentary; they told that he was a good family man and that he was respected by his teammates.

  That spring, with DiMaggio ailing, Henrich had to carry the team, and Lelyveld tried to help him do it. He did it by creating a ritual in which he could, through fierce concentration, help Henrich to hit home runs at critical moments. He would sit in his room with the radio on, listening to Mel Allen. He was not to be interrupted. He had a calendar with the Yankee schedule, and slowly, as the game progressed, he would ink out a proportionate amount of the small square of that day. If four and a half innings had passed, he would ink out half of the square. As the game progressed he would ink out more. The inking he thought was important, for there was a certain finality to it—he was closing off the game.

  When Henrich came up in a clutch situation Lelyveld would put his glove on and bounce a ball off the wall. Then he would look at the window at the New Jersey side of the Hudson. There, right across the river, was a huge Spry factory with the company’s name in flashing lights. At the moment Henrich hit, he would look at that sign. Lelyveld used his powers carefully and he was not promiscuous with them; he did not seek unnecessary home runs that merely added to Henrich’s statistical prowess. In that sense he was like his hero himself. But when Henrich came up in the late innings with the game tied, or when the Yankees were a run or two behind, Lelyveld turned on his full powers. His eye did not wander from the sign. He did not drop the ball. His powers were nothing less than phenomenal. (He tried the same ritual, he once admitted, with other players, but had nothing like the success he enjoyed with Henrich’s at-bats.) No wonder, then, that Tommy Henrich had such a phenomenal spring; again and again he got the game-winning home run or double, carrying the team in the absence of DiMaggio.