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

by David Halberstam

  The proprietor himself had a strict sense of propriety, though: He did not like men who told dirty stories in front of women, and he did not like men who cheated on their wives. If a regular came in with a woman other than his wife, he received icy treatment. This club was about being pals, what one regular called palship. The rituals observed were on the order of lending money to a guy who was down, or making sure that the children of pals got handsome presents on their birthdays (though such children were rarely seen, and certainly not known).

  A sense of Our Guys and Their Guys was pervasive. Our Guys were the regulars, the writers who were at the bar and who were favored by Shor. They knew each other and the code of the place—what you did and didn’t do, whom you avoided. Their Guys were in effect the tourists who lined up for tables, and who clearly did not know the drill. Their Guys could also be celebrities who did not know Shor or who failed in their initiation rites, by being either too proper, too subservient, or too abrasive. Shor himself liked to boast of how he had kept Charlie Chaplin, the great actor and comedian, waiting for a table. Chaplin and entourage had shown up without any prior notification, and Chaplin finally complained to Shor about the wait. “Let’s see you be funny for the people [in line] for the next twenty minutes,” Shor had said. There was a lesson here: There was fame outside Shor’s, and there was fame inside; sometimes the two were the same, and sometimes they were not.

  Red Smith and Jimmy Cannon were the star writers, but there was no doubt who the ultimate celebrity was in those days: DiMaggio. Shor was a fan at heart; he loved being surrounded by sports stars. Above all, he loved DiMaggio. He was immensely proud of the fact that they were close, and that DiMaggio favored his place. He helped DiMaggio in contract negotiations one year when the Yankees offered DiMaggio a performance-attendance clause. Shor told DiMaggio to go with the simpler contract and to avoid the attendance clause. DiMaggio followed his advice and it ended up costing him about $25,000.

  While DiMaggio waited for his heel to improve, he found the restaurant a very different place. It was one thing to go there after a satisfying day at the plate; but now that he was separated from the team, the atmosphere there seemed only to underline his new, vulnerable status. Even when people meant well, even when they were scrupulous about not asking questions—Joe, how’s the foot? Joe, when are you gonna come back?—those questions hung in the air. And, no matter how hard Shor tried, it was hard to stop the well-wishers, both old friends and strangers. Everyone seemed to know someone who had been rescued from a bone spur by a doctor with a secret treatment. Others simply wanted to exchange symptoms. Finally, in desperation, DiMaggio retreated to his hotel room. More alone than ever, he did not want to see anyone. He told the switchboard to let through calls from only two people, Shor and George Solotaire.

  By his own admission he was becoming unhinged. He tried to watch baseball games on television, thinking that it would help hone his batting eye. But television baseball was different from the real game. The pitcher would rear back and deliver. The ball would come in. Watching it, DiMaggio would decide a pitch was right down the middle. The umpire would call it a ball. DiMaggio would wait for the catcher or the manager to protest. But they did not. For a while, he thought he was losing his eye. That made him even crazier. Finally he decided it was the fault of the camera, which distorted angles. Because he was tense, he drank more and more coffee. Then he would stay awake until four in the morning, thinking of new careers. When he woke up in the late morning, he could never remember any of them. It was the worst time in his life.

  Only one message brought any kind of relief. Rogers Hornsby, the great hitter from another age, dropped by Shor’s. He had suffered a similar ailment, and it had threatened to end his career. Knowing how close Shor was to DiMaggio, he passed a message to him: “Tell Joe, just be patient. The only thing that can help one of those things is rest.” Hornsby was right, DiMaggio imagined. Meanwhile, a third of the season was gone. Mercifully the Yankees were still winning. In late May they went on a long road trip, not to return until mid-June. They were in first place when they left and in first place by three games when they returned. The Red Sox were more than seven games back.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE YANKEES HAD A tradition of playing in big games and winning. Mental toughness was enforced by the team leaders, and a succession of leadership had been established from generation to generation. The one word Henrich thought described those Yankee teams was tough. They pushed themselves and each other. It was as if everything they did advertised that this was a serious business. They were accustomed to being the best, and they expected to be the best. Besides, in addition to the glory, they needed the extra money. If they played hard, they would make the World Series, and the additional money in those days was enough to buy a house. A player’s salary might be $9,000 or $12,000, and a winner’s share in the World Series as much as $5,000.

  The Yankee players, not the managers, became the keepers of their own tradition. The harshness in the locker room was a reflection of the economic coldness of the world outside. If a young player came up and did not play hard, the veterans would get on him. “That’s my money you’re playing with,” they would say, and they meant their World Series checks. Usually that was enough. When Eddie Lopat joined the Yankees after several years with the White Sox, he was stunned by the more serious attitude of the Yankee players. Right from the start, in training, they were talking about the need to win the pennant in order to play in the World Series. Nothing was to come between them and their rightful postseason bonus.

  “It was a very tough team,” Gene Woodling later said. “It was a team where everyone demanded complete effort. It was not a team where anyone ever said ‘nice try’ when you made a long run after a fly ball and didn’t get to it. I played on a lot of other teams and they all did that. But not on the Yankees. I think someone might have hit you if you said it—nice try, my ass. You weren’t supposed to try, you were supposed to do it. We led the league in RAs—Red Asses—that’s the baseball term for very tough, hard guys. We had more than anyone in the league. Even DiMaggio—elegant as hell, beautiful clothes, always a suit, a gent, but on the field a real RA.”

  Henrich himself had once felt the sting of the veteran players who served as the enforcers of tradition. In his rookie season one day he had fooled around in batting practice, not quite taking it seriously. Suddenly Arndt Jorgens, the third-string catcher, was annoyed. “Come on, Tommy, knock it off. Let’s get serious!” The third-string catcher, Henrich thought—this is a tough club. You don’t mess around here.

  In 1949 Henrich got on Hank Bauer, the intense young outfielder, for not anticipating plays properly. On occasion Bauer would mumble, “How come he’s always getting on me, I’m busting my ass out there.” The answer was simple: Bauer was a strong and driven player, but there was room for improvement. When Henrich first joined the Yankees, the older players were the enforcers. Then, in the late forties, he, Keller, Lindell, and Billy Johnson took over. DiMaggio was above it; it was out of character for him to push others, although he could on occasion cast a cold glance at a malingerer.

  In 1948 Yogi Berra did not yet seem to understand that baseball as played on this team was a deadly serious matter. The Yankees had been playing against Detroit, and Berra had not run out a pop-up; he had made it only to first. That cost the Yankees a run, and, as it turned out, quite possibly a ball game. After the inning Berra came in to strap on his catcher’s equipment. Charlie Keller came over to him. “You feeling all right, Yogi?” he asked. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Berra said. “Then why the hell didn’t you run it out?” Keller asked. Those were hard words from a man who did not waste words. Lindell immediately joined in. Berra looked over to DiMaggio as if to ask for help, particularly because he was a fellow Italian. DiMaggio gave him a withering look. Eddie Lopat, who had watched the entire scene unfold, thought to himself, Now I know why this team is special.

  Later that season the Yankees went to Washington fo
r a doubleheader. By then DiMaggio was exhausted by the season and the pain, but he insisted on playing both games. He was so tired that by the end of the second game Lopat and Allie Reynolds virtually carried him off the field. Berra, claiming fatigue, had begged out of the second game, and in his place Gus Niarhos played. Niarhos came up several times with men on base and drove none of them in. Later in the locker room, DiMaggio turned around and said, loud enough for Berra to hear, “Jesus Christ, a twenty-year-old kid and he can’t play both ends of a doubleheader when we’re fighting down the stretch. What kind of bullshit is this?” From then on Berra’s work habits began to improve.

  The Red Sox were still looking for that kind of tradition. Yawkey had purchased aging stars from the Athletics and other weak teams in the mid-thirties. These veterans brought their talents, which were still considerable, but they also brought their bad habits. Jimmie Foxx, a great power hitter near the end of a magnificent career, delighted at walking into bars and yelling, “The drinks are on the house—old Double X is here.” Often a day at the ball park began by trying to figure out in which local hotel he might still be asleep.

  Lefty Grove, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the sport, had also come to Boston near the end of his career. Grove kept a bottle of whiskey in his locker. He was given to tantrums, though as Ted Williams noted, his tantrums were always beautifully controlled. If he smashed his locker after a tough loss, he always did it with his right hand. When Grove was pitching no one wanted to make an error. When he was still with Philadelphia, he had been close to setting a record for consecutive wins. He had fifteen in a row and was going for his sixteenth. A Philadelphia outfielder had gone onto the field without his sunglasses, and had lost a ball in the sun. Grove, according to the story, never spoke to him again.

  His Boston teammates could easily believe such stories. Bobby Doerr had a very clear memory of Grove’s temper. Early in Doerr’s career, Grove was pitching batting practice, and Doerr, in his last swing, hit the ball hard toward the pitcher’s mound. He thought nothing of it and left the batting cage to pick up his glove, which was lying near first base. As he bent over to pick it up, a baseball whistled by about two inches from his head. Doerr looked up, and there was Lefty Grove screaming at him, “Don’t you ever hit it at me again, you little son of a bitch.” Unfortunately, such antics were more about preserving the dignity of Grove than they were about making Boston a better team, Doerr realized.

  Some of the older players not only drank harder, they even had their hangover rituals down pat. Joe Dobson, the pitcher, was always amazed at the way they worked off bad nights. They would come out to the ball park early the next day and put on old uniforms and windbreakers. Then they would run very hard, sweating out the booze. When their old uniforms were completely soaked, they would go into the locker room, strip, and just drop their soggy clothes on the floor. Then they showered and dressed in their real uniforms.

  That generation had graduated now. But none of the younger men was by nature a leader. Dominic DiMaggio was too reserved; Pesky was feisty, but he was small, and in baseball small men were not often leaders; Doerr was laid back; and Williams wanted no extra responsibilities—striving to be the best hitter in the game and living up to the expectations of the fans and his teammates were quite enough. The Yankees admired the sheer talent of the Red Sox, but thought they lacked mental toughness.

  In fact, the Red Sox were a team that looked better on paper than on the field. They were the kind of team that excites a neophyte fan but worries a professional baseball man. They not only lacked depth both on the bench and in the bullpen; they lacked defensive skill and team speed. The Yankees seemed to be strong, fast, and deep at every position. No one took an extra base on any of the Yankee outfielders, Mel Parnell once noted. By contrast, the Red Sox flexed their muscles at the expense of their overall defense.

  That was particularly true at shortstop. At this most critical position, Boston was deficient. Junior Stephens played adequate shortstop, although in no sense was he one. When a ball came to him, he often dropped down to one knee to take it. The first time Jerry Coleman saw Stephens, he thought to himself, That is a man who’s scared of his job. There were those on the team, including Doerr, who thought the ball was coming in to second awfully late, and Doerr was going to get killed by a base runner if Junior did not speed it up. Pesky had played shortstop before the trade, but McCarthy had moved him to third because he had better hands and was quicker.

  Shortstops were the glue of a good team. One reason the Yankees and the Dodgers were perennial pennant winners in that era was that they had the two best shortstops in baseball: Phil Rizzuto and Pee Wee Reese. In 1949 both were in their prime. The great irony was that Reese had been a Red Sox farmhand, the final piece, some of the players thought, in cementing a great team. But he had been traded while he was still a minor-league star ten years earlier, not because he wasn’t good enough but because he was too good. Joe Cronin, the player-manager and shortstop at the time, wanted to play five more years, and he wanted no part of Pee Wee Reese.

  Unfortunately, Cronin was Tom Yawkey’s closest adviser. Here was the real virus in the Boston organization: cronyism. Yawkey had bought the Louisville Colonels for $195,000 for one reason—to gain the rights to its young shortstop. But Cronin managed to ignore Reese’s obvious talent. What he saw instead was his size, or lack thereof. The first thing he said when he saw Reese was, “So that’s the guy who’s going to take my place. He’s too small.” From then on he kept up a steady drumbeat with Yawkey to get rid of Reese. Reese started the 1939 season slowly, and orders came down from Boston for Billy Evans, who was in charge of the Boston farm system, to sell Reese. Evans resisted as long as he could. Soon Reese began to play well, and Evans begged Cronin to send someone down to look at him. “I’m not interested in Reese,” Cronin told Evans. In Brooklyn, Larry MacPhail, a shrewd judge of talent, was watching these events, his mouth watering. He finally bought Reese from Boston for $75,000. Yawkey, who did not need the money, had virtually given away a diamond of a player without even giving him a shot at the major leagues.

  Not long afterward a very drunk Yawkey called Evans one night and fired him. Evans told friends that Cronin had been behind this move as well. Had I been out that night at the movies, or had I called him the next day when he was sober and asked for my job back, I could have had it, he told friends. Instead he was pleased to leave. Enough was enough.

  Such stories were typical of the Red Sox at the time. It was, for better or worse, an extension of owner Tom Yawkey’s whims. If a group of business-school professors might have chosen the Yankees as an exemplary model of cold-blooded organizational skill, then they would have been equally appalled by the Red Sox organization. George Weiss was a hired hand who ran the Yankees as a business; he had a vested interest in maximizing the profit. With very few exceptions he treated his athletes as potential adversaries who would take advantage of any kindness bestowed upon them, and who performed best only when they were hungry. He had no desire to get close to them, and there was no doubt in his mind that he was more important to the success of the Yankees than they were.

  If Weiss paid below the going rate, Yawkey, one of the richest if not the richest owner of his generation, made sure that he paid above it. The implicit motto of the Red Sox was that whatever happened, the ballplayers should never be made unhappy.

  Yawkey, the heir of a Michigan timber and mining family, had come into a large part of his inheritance when he was thirty, and four days later he bought the team. He was the last of the breed of wealthy owners known in the press of the day as “sportsmen.” He idolized his ballplayers. A shy, rather lonely man, his life was simple. He lived during the winter months in the Pierre Hotel in New York. When the baseball season started he moved from New York to Boston, and took up residence in his apartment in the Ritz. There he adhered to a basic routine. He would get up late, eat in his room, then be driven to the ball park by his chauffeur. He would go
to his box at Fenway with a few of his close associates, watch the game, start drinking in the later innings, particularly if the Red Sox were losing, and then be driven back to the hotel by his chauffeur, where once again he would eat in his room. Those times when he actually appeared in the Ritz dining room were rare indeed.

  Clif Keane, the Boston sportswriter, watched him with fascination all those years. Yawkey was a man, he thought, who loved sports, loved baseball, and loved the people who played it, yet was utterly afraid of them. In 1975, during the memorable World Series between the Red Sox and Cincinnati, Keane turned to Yawkey after one game. “Hey Tom, I’m going over to the Reds’ dressing room to talk to Sparky [Anderson]. Want to come along?” “They don’t want to meet me, Clif,” he answered. “Of course they do, Tom,” said Keane, and so they went. Anderson, possibly the most charming and ebullient man in baseball, went out of his way to be gracious to Yawkey. The latter was thrilled. “Clif,” he kept saying when he left, “that was grand—just grand. What fun! What a grand fellow!” “Come on, Tom,” Keane wanted to say, “what’s it all about? Why can’t you just be a real person, go out and talk to the baseball people all around you, be human, be natural. They’d all like you, you know.”

  But Yawkey’s shyness, almost pathological, had profound organizational consequences. He drank quietly but steadily in his solitude. He had very few friends, and those with whom he was truly close were such men as Eddie Collins, Joe Cronin, Haywood Sullivan, and Mike Higgins, all of whom worked for him. Obviously, this situation was unhealthy. There was a constant blurring between professional matters and friendship. Yawkey’s management staff became small and incestuous. They made him, as he once said of Sullivan, laugh. Some of them became expert at playing to him, at knowing what he wanted to hear, what subjects were forbidden, and how to get what they wanted from him. He liked, for instance, to arm wrestle with Mike Higgins, and Higgins knew when to lose and when to win. It was a matter of instinct and survival.