This Day in Baseball History (Yanks’ Bill Dickey Clubs 3 HRs)

July 26, 1939—In perhaps the greatest offensive performance of his career, catcher Bill Dickey belted three home runs, leading the New York Yankees to a 14-1 run of the St. Louis Browns, continuing a turnaround for the Bronx Bombers that would lead to victory that fall in the World Series.

When I mentioned to a friend that I would be blogging about Dickey, he laughed and said, “Oh, you mean the OTHER Number 8!” It was Dickey’s misfortune to be overshadowed by another catcher who surpassed him in career home runs, World Series rings, and hold on the popular imagination: Yogi Berra. The two wore the same uniform number, and with both going to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the team eventually retired the number as a way of honoring each.

As it happened, Berra might not have developed into what he became without Dickey. But more on that shortly…

The first half of July 1939 had been rough for the Yankees in general and Dickey in particular, marked by the devastating medical diagnosis that ended the career of the catcher’s road roommate and best friend, Lou Gehrig, and the team’s tribute to the slugger on July 4—“the most emotional day I’ve had in my life,” Dickey would remember. 

After a five-game losing streak just before the All-Star Game, the Yanks lost a July 13 game they led 4-1 going into the bottom of the eighth inning, then saw their pennant lead over the Boston Red Sox shrink to just 5½ games. Then they righted the ship, winning seven straight away games against the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns.

Back in New York on the 26^th, traps set through Yankee Stadium caught 5,000 Japanese beetles that had mysteriously invaded the ballpark. Maybe the Browns were nettled by what had gotten into the field that afternoon, because they were utterly powerless to stop a Yankee onslaught that included at least one run in every inning.

Leading the way was Dickey—but then again, nobody was particularly surprised. At 32, Dickey was, like Gehrig, mature in age and manner—a necessity on a team with its share of brash young players—and, thus, a model on how to comport one’s self.

At the same time, he was still in the prime of his career. Dickey was probably only surpassed at his position in the 1930s by Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett. He may have taken special satisfaction in his offensive explosion on this day because he’d been advised by his first manager, Miller Huggins, to concentrate on making contact rather than hitting the long ball, as the team already had someone who specialized in the latter department (Babe Ruth).

Dickey would finish the 1939 campaign by batting .302—the last time his average would be over .300—with 24 homers and 105 runs batted in. That fall, he would cap it all by clubbing two home runs and 5 RBIs in the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Moreover, he remained sterling on defense. He had mastered the art of adapting to conserve his physical skills as long as possible (notably, adopting a one-handed catching technique, saving his right arm from wear and tear), while the years had only deepened his savvy in the linked arts of knowing how to get opposing batters out and how to get the best out of his own pitching staff, a lineup ranging from strong, silent Red Ruffing to ebullient but erratic Lefty Gomez. 

(Once, facing muscular slugger Jimmie Foxx, Gomez shook off all Dickey’s called pitches till the catcher walked to the mound to ask what he did want to throw Foxx. “Nothing,” Gomez responded: “Let’s wait a while. Maybe he’ll get a phone call.”)

The last link to the Ruth-Gehrig team of the late 1920s, Dickey served as the bridge to the Joe DiMaggio-led dynasty of the late 1930s and 1940s. Remarkably, though, his influence extended into the mid-Sixties. It happened like this:

In 1946, with his own playing days winding down, Dickey took over as manager from Joe McCarthy, who, after clashing with new general manager Larry MacPhail, parted ways with the team. But Dickey had his own differences with MacPhail and quit with 14 games left in the season.

Before the 1949 season, however, a new GM, George Weiss, asked Dickey to serve as a coach under new manager Casey Stengel, with one special assignment: take young catching prospect Yogi Berra under his wing. The team had no doubt about his ability to hit, but his defense was suspect. 

So Dickey got to work—as Berra put it, “learning me all his experience.”  It involved fouls, pop-ups, plays at the plate, controlling the pitcher and the game, knowing everything on the diamond—in effect, acting as the on-field stand-in for the manager. Dickey would do the same for Elston Howard, the 1963 American League MVP.

"Bill Dickey isn't just a catcher,” wrote sportswriter Dan Daniel. “He's a ball club."

This Day in Baseball History (Catcher Shin Guards Worn for 1st Time)

April 11, 1907—They all laughed at Columbus, the Gershwin brothers told us. Likewise, when Roger Bresnahan squatted behind home plate, the crowd on opening day for the New York Giants couldn’t stop laughing at the bulky new get-up of the team’s catcher.

A good thing they were in the stands, well out of Bresnahan’s reach. The catcher was a mirror of John McGraw—a competitive, fiery Irish-American who cared for nothing but winning, and who was ready to take on anybody who dared cross him. And this day, at the Polo Grounds, there were many people willing to do so, and they erupted in uproarious laughter when a foul tip rocketed off his new leg accouterments in the fifth inning of the game against the Phillies.

Well, you can’t blame either party entirely in this instance. That day, by the standards of the American diamond, Bresnahan’s attire was strange. The word in the last sentence that makes all the difference, of course, is American. British sports fans would have seen something like this, all right, on their cricket goaltenders. For U.S. fans who hadn’t beheld that particular sight previously, Bresnahan would likely have looked like a bumbling medieval knight.

They were profoundly mistaken. Bresnahan had been inspired to take the next evolutionary steps in shielding himself and others at his position from their usual wear and tear. God only knows how many catchers following Bresnahan would have succumbed to injury even sooner had he not tried out shin guards. 

Bresnahan was a player willing to try anything—even all nine positions on field. (I heard of the Minnesota Twins’ Cesar Tovar doing this in a single game—still, whether in such a concentrated instance or over a career, it’s quite a feat.) If Bresnahan was willing to try a new position, why not a new idea?

This one he discovered quite by accident, in a homeplate collision with the Phillies’ backstop Red Dooin. When he looked up, Bresnahan  couldn’t believe what he saw: papier mache shin guards worn under the stockings to protect Dooin’s heavily scarred legs. A problem loomed in Bresnahan’s case: he was considerably bulkier than the lithe Phillies catcher. The white cricket shinguards that put Giant fans (and the team’s rivals) in such convulsions was one remedy.

Shin guards represented the next evolutionary step—really, the last one—in the catcher apparatus that a later practitioner, Harold “Muddy” Ruel, would term “the tools of ignorance.” (Ruel, when he wasn’t calling signals for Walter Johnson in the 1920s, had learned to use language in creative ways as an attorney.) The rubber-mouth protector, the catcher’s mitt, the chest protector and the face mask had already been invented. 

But finding shin guards had become an increasing necessity, as baseball rules adopted in the 1880s had stipulated that the final strike, including foul tips, had to be caught on the fly. Staying close had the additional advantage of helping in “framing” pitches and fielding bunts. But proximity to the batter also made catchers far more prone to, at least, all kinds of little nicks, and sometimes far worse.

Bresnahan  was always on the alert for something to protect him. Part of it had to with being hospitalized after being beaned. A batting helmet he devised afterward—kind of like half of a leather football helmet, worn on the side of the head where the player batted from—never really caught on. But after some adjustments to cut down on bulkiness, Bresnahan’s shin guards did, as did his use of  leather-bound  rolls of padding in his wire catcher's mask.

Versatility, a willingness to experiment, and shrewdness (he caught Christy Mathewson’s three shutouts in the 1905 World Series) led to Bresnahan’s posthumous election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945. This year, he’s been nominated to the Irish-American Baseball Hall ofFame. The “Duke of Tralee” (an incorrect moniker bestowed by a sportswriter) is hardly among the more conspicuous nominees on the ballot, but maybe his election—and pieces such as the one you’re now reading—will spread his fame.

Flashback, July 1980: Bench Sets All-Time HR Mark for Catchers

Johnny Bench set a record for most career home runs by a catcher with his shot off Montreal’s David Palmer. The 314th round-tripper for the Cincinnati Red slugger on July 14, 1980, also gave rise to one of the great congratulatory telegrams of all time, from the man whose mark he surpassed, the New York Yankees’ Yogi Berra: “Congratulations, John. I knew my record would stand until it was broken.”

Bench had a few other things in common with Yogi, besides power: both were multiple-MVP Hall of Famers (Berra with three, Bench with two); both were winners when it counted, in the World Series; and both were at the heart of the most feared lineups of their age, with Berra eventually gaining 10 World Series rings and Bench two.

Over the decades, certain positions have produced rather good-humored arguments about which of a trio of contemporaries happened to be the greatest. In the early part of this decade, discussions revolved around shortstops Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra; in the Fifties, they involved New York centerfielders Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Duke Snider; in the Seventies, the fights raged over catchers Bench, Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk.

The centerfielder argument was resolved, in its way, as amicably as you can get: all three men eventually won World Series rings and plaques in Cooperstown. Even the shortstop arguments of this past decade have abated, as Garciaparra’s career declined after he left the Red Sox and A-Rod switched to third in deference to Jeter’s place with the Yankees.

But the ‘70s catcher dispute still left its share of bitterness, largely because of the player whose career was shortened the most, in a tragic plane accident: Munson.

If pressed, I would cede primacy among catchers to Bench, who not only possessed awesome power but one of the most blistering arms in the business. (Brooks Robinson, a foe in the 1970s World Series, later observed that the first time he saw Bench throw out a runner heading for second, the ball “stayed at a level of about two feet off the ground all the way. It was like a bullet. He zipped it right out there.”) And, Yankee fan that I am, I still have to tip my cap to Fisk for his extraordinary durability.

But the fiercely proud Munson bristled over comparisons to his great rivals not just for position bragging rights but for championships. Munson—who, like virtually all Yankees worth their salt, hated, just hated, all things Red Sox—had an additional reason to hate Fisk: he felt sportswriters preferred his league rival because of his smoother image.

Munson was also miffed at how the media treated Reds manager Sparky Anderson’s comment after his star became the 1976 World Series MVP: “Don’t ever compare anyone to Johnny Bench.”

Munson had a right to feel annoyed. His team might have been swept in the Series that year, but it was in no way due to their catcher, who batted .529 over the four games—a performance that, under different circumstances, would have netted him the championship MVP.

Nevertheless, Munson might have done well to pay attention to the truth expressed so vividly in Berra’s famous telegram. Records are meant to be broken. Twenty-four years after Bench surpassed Yogi’s mark, the two men—along with Fisk and Gary Carter—showed up at a tribute to Mike Piazza after the Mets catcher surpassed not just Berra and Bench, but now Fisk, with the 352nd homer of his career.

That night in 2004, Piazza spoke with a true sense of history and wonder about “the catching fraternity.” Indeed—I’m not sure even the most knowledgeable of baseball fans can appreciate viscerally the game awareness, pride and toughness it takes to squat behind the plate, day after day, absorbing every kind of physical punishment—then get up and smack home runs. In that light, it’s difficult to imagine where the Yankees and Red Sox rivalry of the past decade would have been without their stalwart backstops, Jorge Posada and Jason Varitek.