Brooklyn's Hero

MacPhail's whole approach to rebuilding the Dodgers was to promote, get attention, stir up Brooklyn's latent patriotism. (The word Brooklyn itself was a guaranteed laugh for the new radio comedians like Bob Hope, Fred Allen, and Jack Benny.) Brooklynites saw themselves as tough, street smart, irreverent toward humans (but not toward religion in what was called "the city of churches"), pushy, outspoken, and proud representatives of the Century of the Common Man, then getting full appreciation in Franklin Roosevelt's second administration. The Yankees and the Giants had enjoyed -- were still enjoying -- an endless flow of glamorous figures and victories. Brooklynites were sick of it. Above all, they would respond to self-assertion -- and Leo the Lip was self-assertion squared.

Grimes knew his baseball -- he was the last of the pitchers licensed to keep using a spitball after 1920, because it was already his stock in trade before the rules were changed -- and had wide experience, a gruff manner, and authority. But he was a public relations zero, and Leo, in one undistinguished season, eclipsed him as a presence. (Leo hit .219 for a seventh-place club, but that was still better than his .203 the previous year in St. Louis.) He had the honor (?) of making the last out of Johnny Vander Meer's second consecutive no-hitter in the first night game ever played at Ebbets Field -- a soft fly to center fielder Harry Craft. Leo didn't always win, but he was always in the center of the action.

So MacPhail made Leo manager of the 1939 Dodgers.

He knew what he was doing. He was loading his roster with veterans and a few truly outstanding rookies. They needed a leader who could keep them fired up, make the moves during ball games, get them an extra edge. They didn't need teaching or a housemother. Leo got them home third in 1939 and second in 1940, with all his adventures and rhubarbs faithfully described to millions of new radio listeners by Red Barber's dazzling style. By 1941, Leo had nearly an all-star team: Dolph Camilli, the home run hitter, at first, Billy Herman at second, Cookie Lavagetto at third, Dixie Walker and Joe Medwick in the outfield, Mickey Owen catching, Whitlow Wyatt and Kirby Higbe starting, Hugh Casey relieving. And the youngsters were Pee Wee Reese, broken in at shortstop by Leo himself (he could teach that!) after MacPhail bought him from the Red Sox farm club in Louisville, and a whiz named Pete Reiser, stolen out of Rickey's own farm system in 1937 for a $100 bonus when Judge Landis went on one of his free-the-farmhands sprees.

The Dodgers gave Brooklyn its first pennant since 1920, and Leo epitomized the community's cocky triumph -- even if they did lose the World Series to the Yankees -- a shocking defeat that occurred after Casey threw a third strike past Tommy Henrich and also Mickey Owen with two out in the ninth inning of the fourth game, setting up a 7-4 loss in what would have been a 4-3 victory.

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