Flashback, June 1950: Ex-Yankee Skipper Joe McCarthy Manages Last Game for Bosox

Seventy years ago this week, the great career of Joe McCarthy—the first manager to win pennants in both the National and American Leagues—came to a sad, but not entirely unforeseen, end. The former skipper of the New York Yankees, who for the last 2½ years had been expected to repeat his success with the Bronx Bombers’ deeply talented rivals, the Boston Red Sox, had resigned after a disastrous stretch of games in which the Bosox fell 9½ games out of first place.

With coach Steve O’Neill replacing him for a few games after a crushing loss on June 18, McCarthy had emerged to announce he was stepping down. The official reason—ill health—would have sounded familiar to Yankee fans, as he had provided a similar factor for ending his tenure in New York.

But front-office personnel with the Yankees would have felt a sense of déjà vu when they heard a rumor about what led to his “ill health”: mounting frustration in this quiet but ferociously competitive manager that he could no longer summon the magic that had once led the Yankees to seven World Series championships from 1932 to 1943. In May 1946, that inner turmoil, along with a deteriorating relationship with team president Larry MacPhail, led him to drink more heavily, then resign. 

The same dynamic appeared to have recurred when he went to Boston. Despite two straight 96-win seasons in which the Red Sox missed the World Series by a single game (first through a one-game playoff loss to the Cleveland Indians, then the next year in the final weekend to the rival Yankees), Beantown sportswriters had taken to second-guessing his decisions. 

Then, with the Red Sox losing nine of 10 games in mid-June to the St. Louis Browns, the Cleveland Indians, and the Detroit Tigers, the sniping intensified. 

In later years, the question hanging over McCarthy’s departure was if he had truly chosen to go himself or if the decision had been precipitated by general manager Joe Cronin and team owner Tom Yawkey.

At age 63, McCarthy would never manage another game, and the loss of two straight positions due to “ill health” may have led some to wonder how much longer he might live. 

But, back at his farm in the Buffalo area and free from stress, McCarthy stopped drinking heavily and his health improved. He not only was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967 but survived for another 20 years after that, dying at last at age 90.

The passage of time provided better perspective not only on how much McCarthy had accomplished in Boston (no Red Sox team would finish even as high as second place until the pennant-winning squad of 1967), but throughout his career. 

He had raised the performance of three different ball clubs: the Chicago Cubs (a team he took to the World Series in 1929), the Yankees and the Red Sox. Players came to appreciate his tough-but-fair manner. 

On the one hand, “Marse Joe” (a nickname bestowed on him while in Chicago) was a perfectionist who insisted on seriousness and professionalism on and off the field (players were to report for breakfast each morning), endlessly stressed fundamentals and demanded the utmost from each player, starting with his famous “Ten Commandments of Baseball. (The Ninth “Commandment”: “Do not find too much fault with the umpires. You cannot expect them to be as perfect as you are.”) 

On the other hand, he earned the undying gratitude of players by never criticizing them in front of the press.

Joe DiMaggio observed, “Never a day went by that you didn’t learn something from McCarthy.” McCarthy's career winning percentages of .615 in the regular season and .698 in the postseason remain the gold standard among managers. 

Baseball historian Bill James put it succinctly: “I believe that Joe McCarthy was the greatest manager in baseball history.”

This Day in Baseball History (Hornsby Out of Windy City, in Grimm Tale)

Aug. 2, 1932—As the baseball season entered late innings, the Chicago Cubs let go player-manager Rogers Hornsby, naming as his successor a man whose sunny personality didn’t match his surname, Charlie Grimm. Peace reigned again, after a seemingly interminable interval, in the Windy City. Half a continent away, if he could break his attention from his resurgent New York Yankees long enough, Joe McCarthy would have let out a gruff guffaw.

At the end of the 1930 season, with only four games left to play, Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley had decided to replace McCarthy, a tough but shrewd skipper who instilled discipline, with Hornsby—as pissed-off in the dugout as he was peerless on the field. “The Rajah,’’ as sportswriters nicknamed him, was halfway through a career taking him to Cooperstown—seven National League batting championships, on his way to compiling a lifetime batting average of .358, second only to Ty Cobb. 

The trouble was, as one writer put it, “Hornsby knew more about baseball and less about diplomacy than anyone I ever knew.”

For all the fireworks he was responsible for on the field, Hornsby created considerably less welcome explosions off it. Leave aside, if you can, the fact that Hornsby was anti-Semitic and racist. For all his single-minded desire to win (his response, upon being asked what he did in the offseason: “I stare out the window and wait for spring”), for all his admitted knowledge about hitting, he was simply tactless—and, like many men excellent at their work, impatient with those who couldn’t grasp the lessons he tried to impart.

Yet this was still the era of the player-manager—maybe not quite what it was at its 1876-1910 height, when nearly half of the more than 200 player-managers in the history of “The Show” worked, but nevertheless an age when one of the nine on the diamond might be raised among his fellows to call the shots. Besides Hornsby, other prominent player-managers of the 1930s were Bill Terry, Jimmy Dykes, Joe Cronin, Mickey Cochrane and Frank Frisch. Owners might find this an intriguing concept—it meant that the two jobs could be done on only one salary—but, in the case of Hornsby, they would find, all over again,  the dangers of this dual job.

The other day, I heard former Yankee outfielder and current broadcaster Paul O’Neill say that players on contending teams tended to enjoy the period after the late summer trading period, because the team knew who it would be “going to war” with in pursuit of a World Series ring. Hornsby’s idea of “war” was less metaphorical than O’Neill’s, and more akin to the famous statement by Ernest King, Commander in Chief, US Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations in WWII: “When a war starts, they send for the sons of bitches.”

In St. Louis, Hornsby’s reputation was set, for better and worse. He led the Cardinals to a dramatic World Series victory over the Yankees, even ending the game in the decisive seventh contest by tagging out Babe Ruth at second. But he also showed little willingness to de-escalate disputes. Arguing with the Philadelphia Phillies’ Art Fletcher, he suddenly punched him in the face. Asked why later on, he responded simply: ““Well, I wasn’t making any progress trying to talk to him.” 

When the Cardinals’ owner balked at his demand for a raise (this after his batting average dropped from .403 to .317), he was traded to the New York Giants, where he ran afoul of manager John McGraw. Another trade, this time to the Boston Braves, followed, and though Hornsby rebounded to his old form at the plate, the Braves flopped when, a month and a half into the season, he was asked to take the helm.

That brought him to the Cubs. Hornsby insisted that he and McCarthy had gotten along fine. Teammates, including the well-regarded Grimm and Gabby Hartnett, thought otherwise. When Wrigley delivered the coup de grace to McCarthy with the season not even over, Cubs president William Veeck, Sr. was so upset that he could only be talked into coming back through the owner’s assurance that he would never interfere with the team again.

Lack of interpersonal skills continued to plague Hornsby. Billy Herman, who would go on to become one of the best infielders in the league that decade, came to the Cubs in The Rajah’s first season as manager. “He ignored me completely,” Herman recalled years later, “and I figured it was because I was a rookie. But then I realized he ignored everybody.”

Most dangerous for his relationship with those he directed was the way Hornsby let money run through his fingers. He had no real hobbies besides playing the stock market and the ponies—and he was a lousy handicapper at both. At one point, he had lost so much money at the racetrack that he had to borrow money from his own players.

When the end came for Hornsby at Chicago, the team was out of first place by five games. But with the more even-keeled Grimm in charge, the Cubs rallied and overtook the Pittsburgh Pirates to take the National League pennant.

All Charlie Grimm did in 1932 was get the Cubs into the World Series—something they’d only done three times since 1908—a feat he’d repeat again in 1935 and 1945. It wasn’t his fault that his squad fell to a Yankee team under McCarthy that was returning to glory—especially one powered by a highly motivated Babe Ruth, who, incensed by razzing he’d recently taken, clouted a dramatic homer that may or may not have been “called.”

As for Hornsby, his best days in the majors were behind him, both on the field and in the dugout. He would manage six different big-league teams by the time of his death in 1963. But he would never again repeat his moment of glory in St. Louis.

Hornsby had a deep and genuine charitable streak when it came to children, and he seems to have worked decently with minor-leaguers. But he was totally at a loss in motivating grown men. Ron Fimrite, writing for Sports Illustrated, may have summed him up best: Hornsby was “cold-blooded, pigheaded, humorless and obsessive, a curmudgeon who regarded as utterly worthless anything that did not involve throwing, catching or hitting a baseball.”

Quote of the Day (Rich Cohen, on Why ‘A Cubs Fan is a Buddhist’)

“By accepting the inevitability of defeat, a Cubs fan can actually live a better life, become a better person. A Cubs fan is a Buddhist. He or she knows that life is suffering and that relief from that suffering comes only by giving up all expectation and desire for victory. In its place, you receive the gift of right now, which is Wrigley Field on a perfect summer day when a breeze is wreaking havoc in the ivy. Whereas my father curses the TV and second-guesses the manager, I understand the term ‘preordained.’ He believes the outcome is in doubt. I know it has all happened before and will all happen again. He was born years before me but, in a way, I am the older man. By wearing the hat with the red C, you tell everyone your kingdom is not of this world.”—Rich Cohen, "A Cub Fan’s Fear of Winning," The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2015

When Rich Cohen wrote this, Cubs fans would have been ecstatic simply for a wild-card berth. They had become all too used to all kinds of misfortune, such as the famous "black cat" incident in a crucial series with the New York Mets back in 1969, as captured in this photo. Now, after defeating the two teams that bested them in their division in the regular season this year—the Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals—all bets are off.

After much anguish for their fans, the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays have stamped out the rebellion against their dominion. It’s a different world in the National League, though. As I write this, the Cubs and the Mets are in the National League Championship Series. Who would have guessed that at the start of this year?

It just goes to show: in a short baseball playoff series, anything is possible.

Quote of the Day (Rich Cohen, on the Plight of Today’s Cub Fan)

“A Cubs fan is unique and even necessary, a symbol of defeat in a fallen world, a world where everyone will eventually perish. If my team wins, they will become ordinary. If my team wins, they will later lose. Then they will have become just another team that has won, not very long ago, but is not winning anymore. In winning, the Cubs will make a lot of people happy, but the happiness will fade, and, once it’s faded, what will we have given up? The certainty and distinction and grandeur of epic failure. The humility and holy rags of degradation, the very quality that sets a Cubs fan apart and above. Gone will be the chance to prove the purity of our love for the game. Anyone can look good while winning. Only an aristocrat can be graceful in defeat.”—Rich Cohen, “A Cub Fan’s Fear of Winning,” The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2015

When I checked the standings this morning, the Chicago Cubs’ record stood at 63-48—which translates to 8½ games back of division-leading St. Louis, but still in the hunt for a wild card spot for the playoffs. This will be something to watch, win or lose, the rest of the season.

This Day in Baseball History (Hack Wilson Passes Chuck Klein’s NL HR Mark)

August 26, 1930—It took only a year before the National League record for homers in a single season, set by Chuck Klein of the Philadelphia Phillies, was broken. In contrast, the new record, achieved by Hack Wilson of the Chicago Cubs during one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history, would last 68 years.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to write about the Cubs’ centerfielder. Part of it is because I’m a sucker for great sports nicknames, and the one given to Lewis Robert Wilson seems pretty fitting for a slugger who never stinted on a swing.

But I’ve also wanted to write about Wilson because the magnitude of his season of glory was inversely proportional to the brevity of his career—at least for someone of his great skills.

In a sense, Wilson was a far unlikelier athlete than Babe Ruth. The Bambino might have weighed a ton, too, but it was distributed on a 6-ft.-2-in. frame, and through most of his career it never affected his defensive prowess. Moreover, for all his bibulous activities, it’s not apparent that liquor seriously hampered his achievements.

None of this can be said about Wilson, who stood five ft. six inches but weighed 195 pounds. The man who covered the most ground of any position player in Wrigley Field was like a beer keg chasing flying balls.

The 25,000 fans in attendance at Wrigley Field saw their hero near his zenith the day he surpassed Klein’s mark of 43 HRs. Wilson’s roundtripper formed part of his 4-RBI barrage that powered the Cubs to a 7-5 win, helping manager Joe McCarthy’s squad stay in first place. (No talk of futility in those days: the team had made it to the World Series the year before.)

For the rest of the 154-game season, Wilson amassed another 12 homers, giving him 56 for the year. While a number of NL hitters exceeded the 50-homer mark over the next half-century, nobody surpassed Wilson's achievement until the 1998 season.

Stop right there—I know what you’re thinking: It was McGwire and Sosa who broke it that year, wasn’t it? Well, they deserve to go into the record books, all right—as long as it’s with syringes next to their marks!

I’m with you on that, brother!

But there’s one record set by Hack that remains inviolable—his record for RBIs set in a season. Since 1938, no NL batter—not even in the steroid era—has come within 25 RBIs of Wilson’s 190.

Correction—make that 191. Hack is one of the few baseball players whose stats actually improved after he died. That amazing feat was accomplished when a modern statistician reviewed all the box scores for the season and decided Wilson had been been robbed of at least one run batted in.

It was typical of Wilson’s life that this bit of good news happened too late for him to enjoy it. The following year, peevish Rogers Hornsby rather than tough-but-fair Joe McCarthy managed—or, in the case of “The Rajah,” mismanaged—Wilson and the Cubs.

It’s true that baseball’s decision to “deaden” the ball that season would have led to poorer offensive totals for Wilson. But his boozing only exacerbated his power outage in 1931, as his 13 homers represented less than a quarter of those he belted in 1930. 

Moreover, Wilson was a chaotic, divisive presence on the field and in the clubhouse, with his antics finally leading to his suspension toward year’s end. By 1934, he was washed up and out of the game.

In his last years, Wilson came to enough self-knowledge to admit on a radio program that “Demon Rum” had shortened his career and adversely affected his relationships. When he died in 1948, his old drinking buddies had to pass the hat in their favorite pub to ensure that the penniless former slugger had a funeral.

It took another 31 years after that for sportswriters to ignore career offensive totals that look no better than ordinary. Instead, Cooperstown’s Committee considered what he did in his prime (1926-1930) and how he stood against the elite of his time, finally deciding this powerfully built, squad refugee from the coal region of Pennsylvania deserved induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.

Quote of the Day (George F. Will, on the Perennially Losing Chicago Cubs)

“Some people think it's cute—lovable losers, Wrigley Field is the biggest singles bar in Chicago, yada, yada, yada. I think it's disgusting. I really think protracted mediocrity is not admirable. . . . The Cubs, I think, have something like $111 million tied up in eight players through 2011. That's not funny, that's malpractice."—Political columnist (and lifelong Chicago Cubs fan) George F. Will, quoted in Robert Costa, “The Weekend Interview--Baseball: 'The Right Sport for a Democracy,'” The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2010

But George, tell us how you really feel!