July 3, 1950—In a particularly trying day in a trying season for baseball’s greatest team and greatest star, Joe DiMaggio—the standard of excellence for all future New York Yankee centerfielders—played first base, much to his unease. The 13 plays in which he was involved that day in Griffith Stadium against the Washington Senators came off uneventfully. Well, uneventfully for anyone not nicknamed “The Yankee Clipper.”
“He's worried all over,” teammate Tommy Henrich recalled for a PBS documentary in the “American Experience” series, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. “He's afraid of making a dumb play because he's not familiar with first base. It would have killed him to make a stupid play.”
Actually, Henrich was one of the reasons why DiMaggio ended up at first base. “Ol’ Reliable” was out injured (it would be the last season for the great 37-year-old clutch hitter), and his replacement, rookie Joe Collins, wasn’t hitting the ball with enough authority.
But even without these factors, the idea might have been implemented because of Casey Stengel. In his second year at the helm of the team, with a World Series win under his belt, he now felt more comfortable about asserting his authority.
Players were no longer sure of their roles. It went far beyond the platooning he would elevate into a science. (In future years, Whitey Ford would chafe at not pitching every fourth or fifth day, but instead being moved around in the rotation so he’d face an opponent’s leading pitcher, or even asked to come out of the bullpen.)
The lack of production at first base furnished Casey with just the opening he needed that, he thought, would not only extend DiMaggio’s career but (better yet) further solidify the reputation for managerial genius Stengel was now earning from beat reporters enthralled by his colorful antics.
DiMaggio’s body was, at long last, breaking down. His heel had given him such ferocious pain that he had missed the first couple of months in the prior season. His return to the team, in a crucial series with the Boston Red Sox, proved the spark the team needed in their down-to-the-wire battle with the Bosox (a race chronicled in David Halberstam's Summer of '49).
Installing DiMaggio at first base, Stengel thought, would save the slugger the inevitable wear and tear of patrolling the vast reaches of center field in Yankee Stadium.
Stengel wasn’t the last manager to have the brainstorm of shifting a superstar to a less physically demanding spot on the diamond. His successor in the dugout at Yankee Stadium, Ralph Houk, would have Mickey Mantle take on first base at points in his last few seasons. Davey Johnson eventually nudged a recalcitrant Cal Ripken from shortstop to third base. In this decade, Mike Piazza barely controlled his annoyance when he learned from beat reporters rather than the front office that Mets manager Art Howe wanted him to lay down his catcher’s mitt and get used to a first-baseman's glove.
The Piazza case became fodder for sports radio jocks and the blogosphere. A good thing they weren’t around five decades earlier, because behind the scenes DiMaggio was fielding Stengel’s maneuver with far less aplomb than he had displayed with booming line drives that invariably ended up in his glove.
* The move brought to the fore his growing dislike of Stengel. Sure, the manager had been deferential the year before with DiMaggio, Henrich, Phil Rizzuto, and the other vets when he thought he needed them. But his famous comment after his World Series victory—“I couldn’t have done it without my players”—rankled DiMaggio.
“He's worried all over,” teammate Tommy Henrich recalled for a PBS documentary in the “American Experience” series, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. “He's afraid of making a dumb play because he's not familiar with first base. It would have killed him to make a stupid play.”
Actually, Henrich was one of the reasons why DiMaggio ended up at first base. “Ol’ Reliable” was out injured (it would be the last season for the great 37-year-old clutch hitter), and his replacement, rookie Joe Collins, wasn’t hitting the ball with enough authority.
But even without these factors, the idea might have been implemented because of Casey Stengel. In his second year at the helm of the team, with a World Series win under his belt, he now felt more comfortable about asserting his authority.
Players were no longer sure of their roles. It went far beyond the platooning he would elevate into a science. (In future years, Whitey Ford would chafe at not pitching every fourth or fifth day, but instead being moved around in the rotation so he’d face an opponent’s leading pitcher, or even asked to come out of the bullpen.)
The lack of production at first base furnished Casey with just the opening he needed that, he thought, would not only extend DiMaggio’s career but (better yet) further solidify the reputation for managerial genius Stengel was now earning from beat reporters enthralled by his colorful antics.
DiMaggio’s body was, at long last, breaking down. His heel had given him such ferocious pain that he had missed the first couple of months in the prior season. His return to the team, in a crucial series with the Boston Red Sox, proved the spark the team needed in their down-to-the-wire battle with the Bosox (a race chronicled in David Halberstam's Summer of '49).
Installing DiMaggio at first base, Stengel thought, would save the slugger the inevitable wear and tear of patrolling the vast reaches of center field in Yankee Stadium.
Stengel wasn’t the last manager to have the brainstorm of shifting a superstar to a less physically demanding spot on the diamond. His successor in the dugout at Yankee Stadium, Ralph Houk, would have Mickey Mantle take on first base at points in his last few seasons. Davey Johnson eventually nudged a recalcitrant Cal Ripken from shortstop to third base. In this decade, Mike Piazza barely controlled his annoyance when he learned from beat reporters rather than the front office that Mets manager Art Howe wanted him to lay down his catcher’s mitt and get used to a first-baseman's glove.
The Piazza case became fodder for sports radio jocks and the blogosphere. A good thing they weren’t around five decades earlier, because behind the scenes DiMaggio was fielding Stengel’s maneuver with far less aplomb than he had displayed with booming line drives that invariably ended up in his glove.
* The move brought to the fore his growing dislike of Stengel. Sure, the manager had been deferential the year before with DiMaggio, Henrich, Phil Rizzuto, and the other vets when he thought he needed them. But his famous comment after his World Series victory—“I couldn’t have done it without my players”—rankled DiMaggio.
* Stengel didn’t meet DiMaggio man to man beforehand to discuss it. Perhaps the manager sensed that his superstar was casting a jaundiced eye in his direction, because he decided to enlist someone else to secure his cooperation: Yankee co-owner Dan Topping. If Stengel was right about one element in this strategy—Topping was so charming that DiMaggio wouldn’t bite his head off for even broaching the idea with him—he was wrong about another: it only decreased DiMaggio’s disaffection with Stengel, for not giving him the courtesy of discussing this face to face.
* DiMaggio had no time to prepare for the move. The Henrich-Collins situation, occurring in the middle of a season—and another pennant race (this time with the Detroit Tigers)—was, admittedly, inopportune for Stengel. But it also meant that DiMaggio didn’t have time to master this new position—and, at this stage of his career, relying on knowledge of the pitch, wind conditions, etc. was more essential to DiMaggio in the field than it ever was. It’s impossible to convey just how perfectionist DiMaggio was, just how much he hated not merely making a mistake but even looking less than graceful.
And that’s what happened in the one game he ever played at first base, a 7-2 loss. The final box score did not show an error on his part, but on one particular play he lost his footing and ended up in the dirt, looking bad.
DiMaggio’s horror was so self-evident that Stengel never repeated the experiment. Another Yankee injury—this time, to rightfielder Hank Bauer—allowed the manager a face-saving maneuver by claiming that plugging the hole in the outfield was even more crucial than the one at first base. (Henrich’s return from the injured list to first base also helped immensely.)
But Stengel wasn’t done with wounding DiMaggio’s pride. No matter how incensed Alex Rodriguez might have felt by being dropped from cleanup to eighth by Joe Torre in the playoffs several years ago, that was nothing compared with DiMaggio’s deep annoyance when his batting slump led Stengel to have his star batting fifth instead of cleanup, a spot the slugger had taken over from an ailing Lou Gehrig 11 years before.
The last straw, though, might have been an even riskier move on Stengel’s part: when DiMaggio’s hitting woes persisted, the manager benched him for a few days—again, without talking about it with him first.
When he came back to the lineup, DiMaggio—whether from rest, rage or both—experienced a rejuvenation at the plate, batting .370 for the rest of the year, giving him a .301 batting average, 32 homers, 114 runs, and 122 RBIs for the season, and helping the Yankees win their second World Series in a row. The next year, as Stengel had—correctly—feared, physical woes really took a toll on the batting statistics that gave DiMaggio so much pride.
The weight of expectations—from teammates who idolized him (even as, they frankly admitted, they didn’t understand him), from the media who made him into an American hero, and most of all, from the inner work ethic that wouldn’t allow him to accept less than perfection—was enormous for DiMaggio to carry. But he left the game a winner, as few before or since have been: In 13 seasons, he led the Bronx Bombers to 10 pennants and nine World Series victories. One speculates how much more he could have accomplished if he had even a few more healthy years, as Stengel had hoped. But what he did, in the relatively limited time he had in the game, was surely enough.
And that’s what happened in the one game he ever played at first base, a 7-2 loss. The final box score did not show an error on his part, but on one particular play he lost his footing and ended up in the dirt, looking bad.
DiMaggio’s horror was so self-evident that Stengel never repeated the experiment. Another Yankee injury—this time, to rightfielder Hank Bauer—allowed the manager a face-saving maneuver by claiming that plugging the hole in the outfield was even more crucial than the one at first base. (Henrich’s return from the injured list to first base also helped immensely.)
But Stengel wasn’t done with wounding DiMaggio’s pride. No matter how incensed Alex Rodriguez might have felt by being dropped from cleanup to eighth by Joe Torre in the playoffs several years ago, that was nothing compared with DiMaggio’s deep annoyance when his batting slump led Stengel to have his star batting fifth instead of cleanup, a spot the slugger had taken over from an ailing Lou Gehrig 11 years before.
The last straw, though, might have been an even riskier move on Stengel’s part: when DiMaggio’s hitting woes persisted, the manager benched him for a few days—again, without talking about it with him first.
When he came back to the lineup, DiMaggio—whether from rest, rage or both—experienced a rejuvenation at the plate, batting .370 for the rest of the year, giving him a .301 batting average, 32 homers, 114 runs, and 122 RBIs for the season, and helping the Yankees win their second World Series in a row. The next year, as Stengel had—correctly—feared, physical woes really took a toll on the batting statistics that gave DiMaggio so much pride.
The weight of expectations—from teammates who idolized him (even as, they frankly admitted, they didn’t understand him), from the media who made him into an American hero, and most of all, from the inner work ethic that wouldn’t allow him to accept less than perfection—was enormous for DiMaggio to carry. But he left the game a winner, as few before or since have been: In 13 seasons, he led the Bronx Bombers to 10 pennants and nine World Series victories. One speculates how much more he could have accomplished if he had even a few more healthy years, as Stengel had hoped. But what he did, in the relatively limited time he had in the game, was surely enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment