In 1942, with Arky Vaughan added at third base and Augie Galan to the outfield, they [Durocher's Dodgers] won 104 games but finished second to the streaking Cardinals. With a 10-game lead in August, MacPhail called a team meeting to tell them they could still lose and got precious little satisfaction from being proved right.

But MacPhail went off to war, and the new boss of the Dodgers was Rickey. He certainly appreciated Leo; in fact, he was one of the few people Leo would listen to with respect. Leo would agree to try to control himself (try, not necessarily succeed). He still got into fist fights, one with a fan, one with an umpire. Brooklyn churches threatened to boycott the team for one of his offenses against morality (having to do with a divorce). Rickey always smoothed things over, but he also had in mind a more important fact. Leo could not control the older group of independent-minded players of his own generation, and didn't try; but when Rickey's plan to stock the team with young players from his own new farm system matured, Leo's charisma, reputation, and knowledge would make them receptive to his control.

After the war, that's exactly how it turned out.

The 1946 Dodgers still had Walker, Lavagetto, Higbe, and Galan -- but they also had Reese and Reiser back from service, Eddie Stanky taking Billy Herman's job at second, and a riflearmed outfielder named Carl Furillo. On the way were Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, and Ralph Branca (already on the team, and just about to blossom into a 20-game winner). Jackie Robinson was being groomed in Montreal, and Roy Campanella would be brought in once the color line was broken. For such a group, Leo was not only the riverboat gambler he'd always been, but an authority figure too.

They did finish first, but lost the playoff to the Cardinals (to Rickey's chagrin, since the Cardinals consisted almost exclusively of his products). But with Robinson added, Leo would do even better in 1947.

Only he couldn't. He had learned to control his fists, but not his mouth. He had institutionalized his philosophy by saying something like "Nice guys finish last," referring to Mel Ott's Giant team. Now he spouted off, to the press, about the presence of "known gamblers" in MacPhail's Yankee box at an exhibition game. The memory and hypocrisy of the antigambling stand of Judge Landis was fresh in mind, even though Happy Chandler, recently a senator from Kentucky, of all places, was now Commissioner of baseball and tsk-tsking "racetrack connections." Leo said something like, "Look at what MacPhail gets away with; if they were guests of mine, I'd be barred from baseball."

Since they weren't guests of his, Chandler barred him from baseball for only one year just for saying so.

Previously, that winter, MacPhail had wanted him for the Yankees. Durocher had decided to stay with Rickey, and MacPhail may have been vindictive in urging Chandler to act. Bucky Harris became Yankee manager, Rickey brought in his old Sunday assistant Shotton to manage the Dodgers, and both teams wound up in a 7-game World Series while Leo, now married to actress Laraine Day, spent the year with the Hollywood set, collecting full pay.

Rickey did reinstall him as manager for 1948 but in July pulled off the most startling deal in baseball history.

Leo Durocher, the ultimate Brooklyn Bum who had enabled the borough to lord it over the hated (but I mean hated) Giants, was going to replace Ott, the personal protégé of John McGraw, as manager of the franchise McGraw had built. And if Brooklynites hated the Giants, that wasn't even half of the intensity with which Giant fans hated Durocher. It was as if Robert E. Lee were suddenly made commander of the Union Army.

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