Are you really sorry you've been rooting for Sammy Sosa? Do you really think his inadvertent (until the hardest evidence suggests otherwise, inadvertent we must accept it to have been) wheeling of a corked bat (which does not add to the flight range of batted balls as much as you think) equals the incontrovertible proof that Sosa and his game are just as phony as the proverbial four dollar bill? Before you answer, it is wise to ponder just a few stories which I know to be true enough, without any inference whatsoever that I think baseball's oldest profession (indeed, all sports') is something to be upheld or defended.
1) So hated was Ty Cobb that, on the 1910 season's final day, when he was neck-and-neck with Napoleon Lajoie for the American League batting crown, the St. Louis Browns' third baseman played his position as far back as feasible to help Lajoie back into the batting crown by letting him drop bunts guaranteed to be beaten out for hits. Fat lot of good that did. The actual race ended in a dead heat, but American League president Ban Johnson, "seeking an essential truth in lieu of true facts," as Bill James phrased it, "made up a couple of extra hits for Cobb and declared him the champion, anyway."
2) Groundskeepers in old Shibe Park, aware enough that the Philadelphia Whiz Kids (the pennant-winning 1950 Phillies, young and fresh and built for speed) included a particularly expert baseline bunter, future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn, sculpted the third base line in such a fashion as to ensure that Asburn's expertise at dropping dying bunts up that line didn't bump into foul territory.
3) Entire books have been written around the idea that the 1951 New York Giants - years before anyone ever heard of the "eye in the sky" grandstand scout - had an assistant in the stands stealing signs, as they made their magnificent comeback to force a playoff for the pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
4) With a newspaper egging them on, Ohio fans actively and unapologetically stuffed the All-Star Game's ballot box, including multiple voting, to make the 1956 game into the Cincinnati Reds versus the American League. Commissioner Ford Frick intervened and substituted two players for two Reds: Henry Aaron and Stan Musial. And within two years the fans would lose the All-Star Game vote until the 1970s.
5) Preacher Roe, Brooklyn Dodgers lefthanded pitcher and as elegant a competitor as ever pitched in Flatbush, admitted after his retirement, in an article for Sports Illustrated, "The Outlaw Pitch Was My Money Pitch." Once, he faced Eddie (Slow, Slower, Slowest) Lopat in a World Series game. "Them two fellas sure make baseball fun," Yankee manager Casey Stengel marveled. "They give 'em a little o' this and a little o' that and swindle 'em."
6) The mid-to-late-1960s Chicago White Sox, at the reputed insistence of manager Eddie Stanky (he who once kicked a ball out of Phil Rizzuto's glove when Rizzuto otherwise had him cold on a play at second base), liked to store the game baseballs in a cool, damp place. "You had to wipe the mildew off before the game.and put them into new boxes," former White Sox backup catcher Jerry McNertney told his Seattle Pilots teammate, Jim Bouton. "The idea, of course," Bouton wrote in Ball Four, "is that cold, damp baseballs don't travel as far as warm, dry baseballs, and the White Sox were not exactly sluggers."
7) Mickey Mantle's fondest desire at the end of the line, in 1968, was to finish ahead of Jimmie Foxx on the all-time home run list. Denny McLain, who pretty much had his 31st win in his hip pocket, decided to make Mantle's wish come true. "He's told me to tell you what's coming," Detroit catcher Bill Freehan told the Commerce Comet as he approached the plate. "He wants you to get it." Mantle simply waggled his bat at the spot where he most liked to connect, McLain obliged, and Mantle drove one into the Tiger Stadium upper deck. (The on-deck hitter, Joe Pepitone, not hearing the original exchange, though McLain was in such a good mood that he might get a groove pitch to hit. Pepitone waggled his bat to the spot where he liked to connect.and McLain smashed three straight unhittable fastballs past him.)
8) Whitey Ford not only knew a few tricks of his trade in his final few seasons and used them (including catcher Elston Howard scraping balls on his shin guard buckles before returning them to the mound), but it became such second nature to him that he finally did it in an Old Timers' Game. "I got tired of getting my jock knocked off," Ford admitted later.
9) Norm Cash, whose lifetime batting average wasn't even close to the .361 by which he won the 1961 American League batting championship, admitted after the season that he had used a loaded bat. He even cooperated with a magazine article in demonstrating just how he loaded the bat. Revealed subsequently: He used the same bat in 1962. And his batting average collapsed by (you can look it up) .118 points.
10) Bobby Richardson, a neat-fielding, clean-living (he was so unapologetic a Christian that he was nicknamed "the Right Reverend," not necessarily in derision) Yankee second baseman, needed one hit to finish 1959 with an even-.300 batting average. "We don't have a single .300 hitter on this team," manager Stengel said, "so if you get a hit your first time up, I'm taking you out."
Stengel was not the only one pulling for Richardson. The Baltimore Orioles, facing the Yankees on that final day, were only too willing to let the Right Reverend get it. Starting pitcher Billy O'Dell also happened to be a fellow South Carolinan and an off-season hunting buddy of Richardson's, according to Bill Madden's freshly published Pride of October: What It Was To Be Young And A Yankee: "Don't worry, I'll be throwing one right in there for you." Moments later, up came Brooks Robinson: "I'll be playing real deep at third if you want to bunt." Catcher Joe Ginsberg: "I'll tell you what pitch is coming." Even first base umpire Ed Hurley was in on the action: "If you hit it on the ground, just make it close at first."
Richardson, to Madden: "I got my pitch and hit a line drive to right field that Albie Pearson made a diving catch on. Pearson was one of my closest friends in the game - we'd spoken together at church! He must have been the only person in the ballpark who didn't know I was supposed to get my hit!"
And thus be it ever that boys will be boys. Even in that Great and Glorious Era before the free agency age destroyed the Great and Glorious Game as we surely knew it.
» Jeff Kallman is a writer and editor living in Huntington Beach, California
Also by Jeff Kallman
» Scammin' Sammy?: Sosa, You Got Some Splainin' To Do
» The Nasty Boy Pitches The Dutchman: Dribbling for Blyleven to the Hall of Fame
» An Artful Dodger: Or, The Incomparably Normal Sandy Koufax
» The Curse of Bo Belinsky?
» Dr. Strangeglove; Or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Hit The Bomb: Dick Stuart, RIP
» More submissions
Copyright © 2003 by Jeff Kallman. Posted June 23, 2003.
BALLPLAYERS | TEAMS | CHRONOLOGY | TODAY | BOOKS | NEWSLETTER | ERRATA | FAQ
