The Glory of Their Times

by Lawrence S. Ritter

  I began to think I was a freak. I felt that everybody was laughing at me. It was embarrassing. I was always slouching around, more or less hiding, never standing up straight.

  Sports was my escape from all that. Many of the very things that were liabilities socially were assets in sports. I felt more comfortable with athletics, and I think that had a lot to do with why I spent most of my time in Crotona Park.

  In any event, whatever the motivation, it paid off. Paul Krichell, a Yankee scout, came to one of our high-school games in 1928 to see one of our pitchers. He didn’t care much for the pitcher, but I had a good day at bat and at first base, and he got interested in me.

  I graduated from James Monroe in February of 1929 and, because my folks wanted me to, I enrolled at New York University starting in September. Mom and Dad had immigrated here from Rumania around the turn of the century. They were only kids then, and they had to go to work when they were very young. They wanted us to have the college education they’d never had.

  Meanwhile, I kept on with my usual routines in Crotona Park, and I also played on a few sandlot and semipro teams while waiting for college to start in the fall. Wherever I played, there would be Mr. Krichell, watching me and taking notes.

  That summer, 1929, Mr. Krichell invited me to go with him to a game at Yankee Stadium. It was only the second time I’d ever been to a major-league game; the first time had been when my Dad took me five years earlier and Frankie Frisch got those seven hits for the Giants.

  We sat in a first-row box right next to the Yankee dugout. When Lou Gehrig came out and took his place in the on-deck circle in the bottom half of the first inning, Krichell leaned over and whispered to me, “He’s all washed up. In a few years you’ll be the Yankees’ first baseman.”

  I heard what Krichell was saying, but it made no impression on me because I was so awed at the sight of Gehrig kneeling in the on-deck circle only a few feet away. His shoulders were a yard wide and his legs looked like mighty oak trees. I’d never seen such sheer brute strength. “No way I’m going to sign with this team,” I said to myself. “Not with him playing first base.”

  The Yankees made me a very good offer—a $10,000 bonus for signing. That was a fortune in those days. But I’d made up my mind that I’d be a fool to sign with them. And as you are well aware, Gehrig played first base every single day for the Yankees until 1939. There was a long line of first basemen owned by the Yankee organization who spent their whole careers in the minors waiting for him to leave. I’m just glad I escaped being one of them.

  Detroit was also interested in me, as well as Washington and Pittsburgh. I liked the Detroit scout better than the others. His name was Jean Dubuc and he’d been a pitcher with Detroit before becoming a scout. He’d gone to college at Holy Cross and Notre Dame and was a very nice person, soft-spoken, low-key, in my opinion a cut above the others. He understood how much my parents wanted me to go to college, and he took that into account. Detroit offered me a $9,000 bonus, a thousand less than the Yankees, but it was drawn up with my mother and father in mind. I was to receive $3,000 immediately on signing and the other $6,000 when I reported to the ball club after college. That pleased my parents, so I signed with Detroit.

  I entered New York University that September, as planned, but after one semester I got bored. I wanted to play ball. I finally convinced my folks to let me try it, so in the spring of 1930, at the age of nineteen, I quit school and went to spring training with the Detroit Tigers.

  For three years the Tigers farmed me out to the minor leagues. In 1930 I played with Raleigh in the Piedmont League, and in 1931 with Evansville in the Three-I League. And then in 1932 it all came together, and I hit 39 home runs and drove in 131 runs with Beaumont in the Texas League. Del Baker was our manager at Beaumont and Schoolboy Rowe and Pete Fox were also on that team; we won the Texas League pennant and I was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player.

  In many of the small southern towns where I played during those years, I think I was the first Jew they’d ever seen. They seemed surprised I didn’t have horns and a long beard. I encountered some hostility, but I’d say much more curiosity than hostility.

  In the minor leagues, I did what I’d always done. I got out to the ball park early, whether it was a game-day or an off-day, and practiced hitting and fielding. It wasn’t hard to talk some of the other guys into doing the same thing. What else was there to do in most of those minor-league towns anyway besides play ball? We were all young, in our teens or early twenties, hardly any of us married, so we’d hustle out to the ball park at ten in the morning and have fun while waiting for the game to start.

  I did the same thing when I was in the major leagues, too, for that matter. Got out to the ball park early for extra batting practice and often for some extra fielding practice. I did it not only at home in Detroit but also on the road everywhere except in New York. The Yankees wouldn’t let me into Yankee Stadium early, to take extra batting practice, but no other club objected. In Boston I remember climbing up on top of that left-field wall in Fenway Park to retrieve baseballs I’d hit up there.

  For a short while I had a problem in Shibe Park in Philadelphia. After about half an hour of batting practice one day, the groundskeeper came over and said we had to leave. As usual, I had a whole crew with me—a pitcher and several guys to shag balls in the outfield. We were getting our gear together, preparing to leave, when an elderly gentleman none of us had noticed, sitting about 20 rows up in the grandstand, called to me. I went up to see what he wanted and he said, “I very much admire what you are doing, young man. You tell that groundskeeper to assist you in every way possible. Tell him that those are John Shibe’s instructions. And if he doesn’t like it, send him right up here to see me.” Needless to say, I never had any trouble in Shibe park afterwards.

  After that fine year with Beaumont in 1932, MVP and all, I counted on being Detroit’s first baseman in 1933. However, the first thing Tiger manager Bucky Harris greeted me with when he saw me in spring training was, “Kid, I’m glad to see you. You’re gonna be my third baseman.”

  Who, me? I’d never played third base in my life, never even had a finger glove on my hand. Detroit had a smooth-fielding first baseman named Harry Davis who they’d bought for $75,000—big money in those days—on Bucky Harris’s recommendation. There were a lot of flashy-fielding left-handed first basemen with no power around then—like Lu Blue, Joe Judge, and Joe Kuhel—and Harry Davis was a carbon copy of that type except he wasn’t quite as good a hitter. But he’d had a pretty fair year in 1932, hit around .270, and the Tigers felt they needed a third baseman more than a first baseman.

  “I don’t know how to play third base,” I told Harris. “I’ve played first base since I was in grade school.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing to it,” Bucky Harris says. “You get out there and practice and you’ll do a great job.”

  So they put me on third base in spring training. I got myself a fielder’s glove and worked like a dog. We started north to open up the ’33 season and played the usual exhibition games along the way. In one of them, I remember, there was a man on first and somebody hit a ground ball to me at third. I fired it to second base so hard, trying for a double play, that the ball was out in right field before Charlie Gehringer could get to the bag. A couple of plays later I booted one by cutting in front of Billy Rogell at shortstop when he had the play practically made. I really made a mess of it.

  The next day I wasn’t in the lineup. No one said a word to me. The following day I’m not in the lineup again, and furthermore I’m not listed to take batting practice with the regulars. Still, nobody’s said a thing to me. However, I was starting to get the message. After a couple more days of this, I came to the park one morning and took that third baseman’s glove and buried it way in the back of my locker. I found my old first baseman’s mitt, put it on my left hand, and walked out onto the field.

  Harry Davis was the regular first baseman, but I stood nearby, in short ri
ght field or in foul territory, and whenever he left I took over at first base and practiced ground balls. When the time came for pre-game infield practice, I’d wait until he was through and then I’d go out and take his place. No one said a word to me and I didn’t say anything to anyone. It was pretty clear from my actions where I thought I was playing, but nobody seemed to care one way or another.

  The season opened with me still sitting on the bench. After the game ended one day, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I showered, dressed, and marched straight up to the front office and asked the switchboard operator if I could see Mr. Navin, the owner. She didn’t know who I was. I told her: “I’m Hank Greenberg. I’m on the team.”

  Mr. Navin said to come in to his office, and as I walked in I was trembling. “Mr. Navin,” I blurted out, “I can’t sit on the bench anymore. I want to play. I’d rather play in Detroit, but if Detroit doesn’t want me then let me go someplace where they do want me.”

  “Now, young man,” he said, “I appreciate how you feel. It’s very understandable. But why don’t you sit on the bench for a while and observe what is happening on the field. You can learn a great deal, you know, by watching these major-league pitchers.”

  “But Mr. Navin,” I said, “I’ll get fat just sitting on the bench.” Here I was, skinny as a rail.

  “Have patience, young man,” he said. “You’ll be playing before you know it, don’t worry.”

  So I sat there on the bench for about two more weeks, very unhappy. I’ll never forget what happened next: one day we were just about ready to go out and start the ball game, when the phone rang in the manager’s cubbyhole in the locker room. Bucky Harris answered it. Then he came out and went over to this big slate board, with the lineup on it, and erased Harry Davis’s name and put mine in its place.

  I played that day, it was against a left-handed pitcher. The next time I played was about a week later against another left-hander. The third time I got in the lineup, I hit a home run and a double, and the next thing you know I was in there every day. I played in about 120 games that season; I didn’t hit many home runs, but I drove in about 90 runs.

  That was the middle of the Depression, 1933. Most everyone was broke. We used to sit around in the hotel lobby waiting for someone to drop a newspaper. No kidding. We’d all sit in the lobby until someone got up and left their newspaper and then five guys would make a dash for it. No one ever thought of going to the newsstand to buy a paper for three cents, which is what they cost then.

  And tipping—in those days a nickel was considered a pretty good tip. We’d hardly ever tip more than that. We used to tease Schoolboy Rowe for leaving a two-cent tip one time at dinner. That’s right, a two-cent tip! We never let him forget it.

  My salary was $3,300 in 1933, and I asked for $5,500 for 1934, figuring I’d had a pretty good year. They only wanted to give me $5,000, though, and that $500 difference led to my first holdout. Mr. Navin wrote me a letter in which he said something like “I’ve had many better ballplayers than you on my team. Ty Cobb once thought he was bigger than the game and I told him if he didn’t want to play he could stay home. The same thing goes for you. If you don’t want to play with us, you can stay home.”

  I was scared, but I didn’t budge.

  A couple of months passed, and then in late February I got a phone call from Detroit. It was Mr. Navin. “Listen, young man,” he says, “if you don’t want to play for us you can just hang up your uniform and stay out of baseball.” And he went on and on like that for ten minutes. Then he said, “However, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you $5,000 guaranteed, but if we finish one-two-three I’ll give you a $500 bonus.”

  One-two-three! What a joke! We hadn’t finished higher than fifth in ten years. But it’s only a week before spring training begins and I’m ready to jump at anything provided I can save face.

  So I said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Navin. I really appreciate that. I’ll be there for spring training on March 1st, sir.”

  Funny thing, we’d been a fifth-place ball club in 1933, lost about as many games as we won. Over the winter, however, Bucky Harris was released, and Mr. Navin bought Mickey Cochrane from Philadelphia and made him playing manager. He also acquired Goose Goslin from Washington. As a result of these and other changes, we won the American League pennant in 1934, the first pennant for Detroit in 25 years, and I actually got that $500 bonus!

  That was an outstanding team, the 1934 and ’35 Tigers. We won the pennant both years and the World Series in 1935. The infield—with Charlie Gehringer at second, Billy Rogell at short, and Mary Owen at third—was superb both defensively and offensively. In 1934 that infield alone batted in a record 462 runs: 139 for me, 127 for Gehringer, 100 for Rogell, and 96 for Owen. The next year we batted in over 400 runs again—including 170 for me and over 100 for Gehringer.

  The infield that batted in 462 runs in 1934 and 420 in 1935: Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, Billy Rogell, and Mary Owen. The 462 runs batted in in 1934 is still a record for an infield.

  Mickey Cochrane: “We needed somebody to take charge and show us how to win and that’s what Mickey did.”

  In the outfield Goose Goslin batted in about 100 runs each year, and Jo-Jo White, Pete Fox, and Gee Walker did their share, too. With Schoolboy Rowe, Tommy Bridges, Eldon Auker, Firpo Marberry, and General Crowder pitching, and Mickey Cochrane catching, I think it’s one of the all-time great teams.

  We had four future Hall of Famers on that team, by the way—myself, Gehringer, Goose, and Cochrane. Charlie Gehringer was possibly the best second baseman who ever lived, a marvelous player, and Mickey Cochrane was maybe the best all-around catcher.

  Cochrane was the spark that ignited us. He was an inspirational leader. We needed somebody to take charge and show us how to win and that’s what Mickey did. He’d been on three pennant winners with Philadelphia—in 1929, ’30, and ’31—and winning was a way of life with him. There was an intangible something about him, a winning spirit, that was really infectious.

  We would have won the pennant in 1936 too, I think, if I hadn’t been hurt. I’d been voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1935, when I hit .328, 36 home runs, and led the league with 170 runs batted in. In 1936, though, the season had hardly begun when Jake Powell ran into me at first base and broke my left wrist. I was out for the whole year and we wound up in second place.

  The following year Mickey got beaned and we were never the same after that tragedy. Cochrane was hit on the head by a pitched ball in May of 1937 and he never played again.

  In 1937, the year after I was out with the broken wrist, the Tigers sent me a $1-a-year contract. And I signed it. I had to go through spring training and prove I was healthy before they’d replace it with a regular contract. Imagine any ballplayer signing a $1-a-year contract today!

  It turned out that 1937 was the best year I ever had. Most people would say 1938 was my best year—when I hit 58 home runs—but I don’t think so. I’d pick 1937, when I hit .337, 40 homers, and batted in 183 runs.

  I’ve always believed that the most important aspect of hitting is driving in runs. Runs batted in are more important than batting average, more important than home runs, more important than anything. That’s what wins ball games: driving runs across the plate.

  Charlie Gehringer used to bat ahead of me, and if we had a man on first base and Charlie was up, I’d yell, “Get him to third, Charlie, just get him to third. I’ll get him in.”

  That was my goal: get that man in. It got to be a standing joke. Once Charlie said to me, “I suppose if I hit a double with a man on first, you’d probably trip him if he tried to go past third base.”

  In 1930 Hack Wilson had set the major-league record for runs batted in: 190. A year later, in 1931, Lou Gehrig had set the American League record: 184. I’m third on the all-time list, with 183 in 1937. I was much more disappointed when I failed to break Gehrig’s runs-batted-in record in 1937 than I was when I didn’t break Babe Ruth
’s home-run record in 1938. Runs batted in were my obsession, not home runs.

  Of course, it’s true that in 1938 I almost broke Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season. I fell two short, with 58. That’s become so closely associated with my name that by now they usually go together in the same breath: Hank Greenberg—58 home runs. Naturally, I was disappointed. I already had 58 and there were five games still to play, so it looked like I had a good shot at the record. But in one of the five remaining games, I was walked four times. In another, Bob Feller set a new strikeout record by striking out 18 men in one game, including me twice. It was one thing after another, and then the final game of the season was called on account of darkness in the sixth inning, and that was that.

  Some people still have it fixed in their minds that the reason I didn’t break Ruth’s record was, because I was Jewish, the ballplayers did everything they could to stop me. That’s pure baloney. The fact of the matter is quite the opposite: so far as I could tell, the players were mostly rooting for me, aside from the pitchers. I remember one game Bill Dickey was catching for the Yankees, he was even telling me what was coming up. The reason I didn’t hit 60 or 61 homers is because I ran out of gas; it had nothing to do with being Jewish.

  Anyway, it really doesn’t matter too much as far as I’m concerned. Roger Maris and Hank Aaron broke Ruth’s home-run records, but nobody pays much attention and rightfully so. Babe Ruth was the ultimate home-run hitter of his time and of all time. He was the greatest player in the history of the game, and whether someone breaks this home-run record or that one can’t change that fundamental truth.