CLYDE SUKEFORTH: [What happened in '48? The team slipped back?]

Well, [Gil] Hodges was new, of course, and [Roy] Campanella was new, but they would have been bad without them. They were both first-year men, I think, in '48. I don't know what we would have done without them. I don't know if it was that year or the following year, we didn't get Campanella until about, well, late in the year, and he should have been there. The only reason he wasn't, as you know, was to break the color line in the American Association. Everybody in every place that ever...anybody that was even interested in baseball, they could feel that Campanella belonged on the club, but he was held back.

...

[Was Minnie Minoso a similar thing?]

Oh, yeah. But there was a fellow, [unintelligible name] went down there, he sent [same name] down to see the Caribbean Series, and this was the finest looking ballplayer that you could possibly look at. He hit like [Rogers] Hornsby, I mean, he could hit that outside pitch into right field. Good Lord, he could...

[Minoso reminded you of Hornsby as a hitter?]

Hitting that outside pitch. He can pull it around to the shortstop or he can hit it off that way. He was a great hitter, no doubt. This guy would remind you of Hornsby, and he could run, and he was young. But, we got all the dope on him down there, we could get that from Mike Gonzalez, the old catcher who owns the Havana club, and the boy can't speak a word of English. So Mr. Rickey said it's pretty tough for a Dominican to come up here and break in if he can speak the language, unless it's an added handicap. It's a handicap that we would be gone with if we'd have had a place for him, no doubt about that. But you couldn't miss on a guy like that.

[From '46-'51 the Dodgers were always in contention. It must have been very exciting.]

Those were good clubs. The Dodgers and the Yankees were both loaded through those years.

[Do you remember Ewell Blackwell's second no-hit bid, that Eddie Stanky broke up]

Clean single through the box. Ground ball, ground single to center field. I think that was in Cincinnati. Somebody said that it was in Brooklyn, though.

[Kiner thought it was in Brooklyn]

.....[unintelligible]....remember it distinctly. Maybe it was.

[Blackwell was a very tough pitcher?]

Wicked.

[Did he come up late, or did he just fade early?]

I don't know. His delivery, I mean, it was so much of a whip to it.

[More than Don Drysdale?]

Somewhat similiar, but Blackwell was a little extreme. I mean, you'd think, you'd be surprised that his arm lasted as long as it did. But he was wicked. It was his own natural way of throwing, I guess.

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